Yannis Stavrou, Still life, oil on canvas
On human nature...
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Aphorisms
If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
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 often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
Perfect Valour is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
Francois de La Rochfoucauld (1613-1680)
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Usually we praise only to be praised.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.
Υποσχόμαστε σε αναλογία με τις ελπίδες μας και διανέμουμε σε αναλογία με τους φόβους μας.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
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.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
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