Luc de Clapiers Quotes - Page 5

We can console ourselves for not having great talents as we console ourselves for not having great places. We can be above both in our hearts.

Simple truths are a relief from grand speculations.

Learn to overrule minor interest in favor of great ones, and generously to do all the good the heart prompts; a man is never injured by acting virtuously.

Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.

Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

The young suffer less from their own errors than from the cautiousness of the old.

To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die.

Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.

As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things. Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.

The conscience of the dying belies their life.

Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.

Great men are sometimes so even in small things.

Hope animates the wise, and lures the presumptuous and indolent who repose inconsiderately on her promises.

Lazy people always intend to start doing something.

Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.

To withdraw ourselves from the law of the strong, we have found ourselves obliged to submit to justice. Justice or might, we must choose between these two masters.

There is nothing that fear and hope does not permit men to do.

No one likes to be pitied for his faults.

The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious.

We must expect everything and fear everything from time and from men.

Those who fear men like laws.

There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.

Despair is the greatest of our errors.