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We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

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
Nothing
Idleness
Much
Excuse
Things
Lack
Strength
Impossible
Imagine
Contriving
Use
Imagining
Often
Reconcile

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Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
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The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.
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Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
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It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
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The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
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Envy is more incapable of reconciliation than hatred is.
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A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being. A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.
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There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.
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Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
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Hope is the last thing that dies in man.
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Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.
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The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride it seems to nourish and augment it it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.
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No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
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Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.
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The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today.
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It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.
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Our good qualities expose us more to hatred and persecution than all the ill we do.
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Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.
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We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
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Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
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