Francois de La Rochefoucauld

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.

There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.

Many men are contemptuous of riches few can give them away.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.

It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

We pardon to the extent that we love.

We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.