Great Throughts Treasury

"If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than form our strength."

"In infants, levity is a prettiness; in men a shameful defect; but in old age, a monstrous folly."

"In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another."

"Intellectual blemishes, like facial ones, grow more prominent with age."

"In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities."

"It is as common for men to change their taste as it is uncommon for them to change their inclination."

"In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance."

"In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love to another."

"It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves."

"It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character."

"It is as easy to deceive one’s self without perceiving it as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out."

"It is as ordinary to see a man change his tastes as it is extraordinary to see him change his inclinations."

"It is great folly to wish only to be wise."

"It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends."

"It is more shameful to mistrust one's friends than to be deceived by them."

"It is not sufficient to have great qualities; we must be able to make proper use of them."

"It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow."

"It takes more strength of character to withstand good fortune than bad."

"It is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others intolerable to us."

"It is never so difficult to speak as when we are ashamed of our silence."

"Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty."

"Little minds are too much hurt by little things. Great minds perceive them all, and are not touched by them (and despise them)."

"Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it."

"Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear."

"It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity."

"Man’s chief wisdom consists in being sensible of his follies."

"Men are oftener treacherous through weakness than design."

"Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised."

"Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice."

"Mediocre minds generally condemn everything which passes their understanding."

"Men are more satirical from vanity than form malice."

"Moderation has been created a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit."

"Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes."

"More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray."

"Moderation must not claim the merit of combating and conquering ambition; for they can never exist in the same subject. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul; ambition its activity and ardor."

"Most people judge others either by the company they keep, or by their fortune."

"Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see."

"No man can answer for his own valor or courage, till he has been in danger."

"No disguise can long conceal love where it really exists, nor feign it where it is not."

"No quality is rarer than true benevolence; even those who imagine they possess it are generally merely of a weak or complaisant nature."

"Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another."

"No persons ware more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong."

"Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones though a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty."

"One speaks little when vanity does not make one speak."

"Of all our faults, that which we most readily admit is indolence. We persuade ourselves that it cherishes all the peaceful virtues, and that without destroying the others it merely suspends their functions."

"Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so."

"Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds."

"Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation."

"Our minds are lazier than our bodies."

"Our distrust justifies deceit in another."