Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

"Great men are sometimes so even in small things."

"If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate."

"You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men."

"Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect."

"There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome."

"Prosperity makes few friends."

"War is not as onerous as servitude."

"Constancy is the chimera of love."

"Fools never understand people of wit."

"We promise much, that we may give little."

"Great thoughts spring from the heart."

"There are few things that we know well."

"Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practice it from self-interest."

"No one wishes to be pitied on account of his errors."

"There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe."

"Truth is the sun of the intelligence."

"Patience is the art of hoping."

"Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy."

"Les grandes pensées viennent du coeur."

"Servitude debases man to a degree that leads him to love it."

"Indolence is the sleep of the mind."

"We quarrel with unfortunates to be exempted from pitying them."

"Equality is not a law of nature. Nature has made no two things equal: its sovereign law is subordination and dependence."

"Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself."

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."

"Emotion has taught mankind to reason."

"Lazy people are always looking for something to do."

"In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die."