Great Throughts Treasury

"Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended."

"Weak persons cannot be sincere."

"We would rather run ourselves down than not to speak of ourselves at all."

"What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own... The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly."

"What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste."

"Old age consoles itself by giving good precepts for being unable to give bad examples."

"Tone of voice, look, and manner can prove no less eloquent than choice of words."

"We always like those who admire us, but not always those we admire."

"When we are unable to find tranquillity (contentment) within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."

"When our vices have left us, we flatter ourselves that we have left them."

"Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body."

"If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noticing them in others."

"No occurrences are so unfortunate that the shrewd cannot turn them to some advantage, nor so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn them to their own disadvantage."

"Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love."

"No man can answer for his courage if he has never been in peril."

"When we resist temptation it is usually because temptation is weak, not because we are strong."

"We should often be ashamed of our very best actions, if the world only saw the motives which caused them."

"We forgive to the extent that we love."

"A fashionable woman is always in love - with herself."

"A fool has not material enough to be good."

"A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter."

"A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others."

"A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate."

"A man does not please long when he has only species of wit."

"A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it."

"A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others."

"A man of sense may love like a madman, but not as a fool."

"A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right."

"A man who is always well satisfied with himself is seldom so with others, and others as little pleased with him."

"A man's desires always disappoint him; for though he meets with something that gives him satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers his expectation."

"A man of wit would often be much embarrassed without the company of fools."

"A man's worth has its season, like fruit."

"A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny."

"A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice."

"A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it."

"A person well satisfied with themselves is seldom satisfied with others, and others, rarely are with them."

"A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial, we miss the most important."

"A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love."

"A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win."

"A weakling is incapable of sincerity."

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."

"A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant."

"Ability wins us the esteem of the true men: luck that of the people."

"Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame."

"Absence lessens moderate passions and increases great ones; as the wind extinguishes the taper, but kindles the burning dwelling."

"Affected simplicity is refined imposture."

"Age is a tyrant, who forbids, at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth."

"All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood."

"All passions make us commit faults, but love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones."

"Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of to-day, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow."