What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.
Francois de La RochefoucauldAbsence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.
Francois de La RochefoucauldA man's wits are better employed in bearing up under the misfortunes that lie upon him at present than in foreseeing those that may come upon him hereafter.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWe are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind. This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all the effects which we attribute to judgment.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld