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There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.

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
Men
Sun
Death
Two
Cannot
Look
Without
Looks
Flinching
Things
Directly

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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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Nothing is rarer than true good nature they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
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Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.
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Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
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Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.
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Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.
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What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.
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Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.
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Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.
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It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.
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Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
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Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.
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Fortune mends more faults in us than ever reason would be able to do.
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We love much better those who endeavor to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For imitation is a sign of esteem, but competition of envy.
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We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which we know not the rules, and a secret conformity of the features to each other, as also to the air and complexion of the person.
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When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
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All the passions make us commit faults love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
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A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
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