If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves.
From Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
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