Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.
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