Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims — François de La Rochefoucauld

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

François de La Rochefoucauld · רישיון: Public domain · מקור

• "He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And he owned with a grin, That his favourite sin Is pride that apes humility." --Southey, Devil's Walk, Stanza 8. ¶407
• "And the devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts} ¶408
• 255.--All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice, gestures and looks, and this harmony, as it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, makes people agreeable or disagreeable. ¶409
• 256.--In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors. ¶410
• "Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last."--Junius.] ¶412
• 257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal the want of mind. ¶413
• 258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than wit. ¶415
• 259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. ¶416
• 260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed polite. ¶417
• 261.--The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love. ¶418
• 262.--There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own. ¶419
• 263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which we like more than that we give away. ¶420
• 264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We help others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these services which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves by anticipation. ¶421
• 265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see. ¶423
• 267.--A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime. ¶426
• 269.--No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does. ¶428
• 270.--One honour won is a surety for more. ¶429
• 271.--Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason. ¶430
• 272.--Nothing should so humiliate men who have deserved great praise, as the care they have taken to acquire it by the smallest means. ¶432
• 273.--There are persons of whom the world approves who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the affairs of life. ¶433
• 274.--The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower to the fruit; it lends a lustre which is easily lost, but which never returns. ¶434
• 275.--Natural goodness, which boasts of being so apparent, is often smothered by the least interest. ¶435
• 276.--Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire. ¶436
• 277.--Women often think they love when they do not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing, persuades them that they have real passion when they have but flirtation. ¶437
• 278.--What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken. ¶439
• 279.--When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit. ¶440
• 280.--The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established. ¶441
• 281.--Pride, which inspires, often serves to moderate envy. ¶442
• 282.--Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that we should judge badly were we not deceived. ¶443
• 283.--Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing how to use than in giving good advice. ¶444
• 284.--There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness. ¶445
• 285.--Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise. ¶446
• 286.--It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really ceased to love. ¶447
• 287.--Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so many resources on the same matter, as the lack of intelligence makes us hesitate at each thing our imagination presents, and hinders us from at first discerning which is the best. ¶448
• 288.--There are matters and maladies which at certain times remedies only serve to make worse; true skill consists in knowing when it is dangerous to use them. ¶449
• 289.--Affected simplicity is refined imposture. ¶450
• 290.--There are as many errors of temper as of mind. ¶452
• 291.--Man's merit, like the crops, has its season. ¶453
• 292.--One may say of temper as of many buildings; it has divers aspects, some agreeable, others disagreeable. ¶454
• 293.--Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming Ambition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat. ¶455

חזרההלאה →ספרי אמרות