We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld