Maxims

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

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

Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

We forgive so long as we love.

People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

357.—Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.

A weakling is incapable of sincerity.

142.—As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

We do not despise all those with vices, but we do despise all those without a single virtue.

269.—No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

321.—We are nearer loving those who hate us, than those who love us more than we desire.

In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.

93.—Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.

78.—The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.

324.—There is more self-love than love in jealousy.

267.—A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.

How comes it that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted to the same person?

103.—Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts.

386.—No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.

237.—No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness of will.

437.—We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.

Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.

70.—There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.