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Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Age: 66 †
Born: 1613
Born: September 15
Died: 1680
Died: March 17
Memoirist
Military Personnel
Writer
Paris
France
François VI
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Prince de Marcillac
François
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Everyone
Moderates
Many
Scarcely
Feel
Obligation
Repaying
Feels
Gratitude
Weighty
Takes
Trifling
Almost
Ungrateful
Pleasure
Moderate
Anyone
Obligations

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Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.
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Eloquence resides as much in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the expression of the face, as in the choice of words.
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Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.
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We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
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The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.
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We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.
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Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
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Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.
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What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.
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Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.
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Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
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We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
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A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
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When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.
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Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.
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If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.
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We had better appear what we are, than affect to appear what we are not.
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Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.
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