The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWhat 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 RochefoucauldPraise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit; the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld