Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily; and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.
Francois de La RochefoucauldAvarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld