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The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

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
Eye
Seeming
Desire
Polite
Mind
Wander
Time
Perceive
Clever
Content
Return
Attentive
Eyes
Wandering

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To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
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The pleasure of love is in the loving and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires.
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Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.
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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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What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
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That conduct often seems ridiculous the secret reasons of which are wise and solid.
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It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
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Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.
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One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.
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We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]
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Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
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Fortune and humor govern the world.
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In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.
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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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In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful.
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Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.
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There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
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The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
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No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.
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Raillery is more insupportable than wrong because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.
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