François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

"87.—Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. [A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."—2 TIM. iii. 13.]"

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

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

"A weakling is incapable of sincerity."

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

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

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