True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
From Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.
There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
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