When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWhen fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.
Francois de La RochefoucauldPerfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWe only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Francois de La RochefoucauldMagnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.
Francois de La RochefoucauldIt is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld