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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
Takes
Trifling
Almost
Ungrateful
Pleasure
Moderate
Anyone
Obligations
Everyone
Moderates
Many
Scarcely
Feel
Obligation
Repaying
Feels
Gratitude
Weighty

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Numberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.
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Weak people cannot be sincere.
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It is difficult to define love all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love-Plus many mysteries.
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A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
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Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.
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What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
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Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.
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Tis more dishonourable to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him.
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Time's chariot-wheels make their carriage-road in the fairest face.
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To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.
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The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.
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Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
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Nothing is so contagious as example.
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Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
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For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.
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As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
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The happiness and unhappiness of men depends as much on their ethics as on fortune.
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A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing.
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True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.
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We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
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