The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.
Francois de La RochefoucauldNumberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
Francois de La RochefoucauldHumility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld