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41 " 22.—Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. "
― François de La Rochefoucauld , Maxims
42 " 469.—We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason. "
43 " On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine. "
44 " Les défauts de l'âme sont comme les blessures du corps: quelque soin qu'on prenne de les guérir, la cicatrice paraît toujours, et elles sont à tout moment en danger de se rouvrir. "
45 " 350.—Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because they think themselves more clever than we are. "
46 " 356.—Usually we only praise heartily those who admire us. "
47 " 19.—We have all sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of others. "
48 " 313.—How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? "
49 " Hope and fear are inseparable. "
50 " In their first passion women love their lovers, in all the others they love love. "
51 " 248.—Magnanimity despises all, to win all. "
52 " 433.—The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy. ["Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae." —Cicero In Marc Ant.] "
53 " We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears. "
54 " 276.—Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire. "
55 " 28.—Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable, as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of others. "
56 " 95.—The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it. "
57 " 87.—Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. [A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."—2 TIM. iii. 13.] "
58 " 136.—There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of. "
59 " 31.—If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. "
60 " Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion. "