French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of Maximes and Memoirs
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.