French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of Maximes and Memoirs
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.