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

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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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One kind of flirtation is to boast we never flirt.
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In the human heart one generation of passions follows another from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.
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Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.
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Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.
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Men and things have each their proper perspective to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.
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We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.
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Weak people cannot be sincere.
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Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after so many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after the least we miss the greatest.
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If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.
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There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
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True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.
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Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.
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Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.
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Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
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The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.
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Even women are perfect at the outset.
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Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
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