We can console ourselves for not having great talents as we console ourselves for not having great places. We can be above both in our hearts.
Luc de ClapiersThe favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.
Luc de ClapiersThe mind is the soul's eye, not its source of power. That lies in the heart, in other words, in the passions.
Luc de ClapiersMen are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.
Luc de ClapiersThe generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.
Luc de Clapiers