Aphorists

"Hope is more patient than despair and so outlasts it."

"Aphorisms respect the wisdom of silence by disturbing it, but briefly."

"Never curse an illness; better ask for health."

"The tragedy of a thoughtless man is not that he doesn't think, but that he thinks that he's thinking."

"Man invented the car to comfortably sit in jams."

"Nienawiść jest jak Hydra, im więcej głów ścinasz, tym bardziej ją wzmacniasz."

"Współczesne cywilizacje są mocno skomputerroryzowane."

"Niewolnik marzy o wolności, człowiek wolny o bogactwie, bogacz o władzy, a władca o wolności."

"Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night."

"Man invented clothing to cover the superficial and to discover the inside."

"Nie Kolumb pierwszy odkrył Amerykę, ale pierwszy ją opatentował."

"The first true love is always the last one."

"If you do not want it to rain, always carry an umbrella."

"A woman withers when she is watered only with tears."

"Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them."

"Emotion has taught mankind to reason."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Patience is the art of hoping."

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

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

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

"Truth is the sun of the intelligence."

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

"Great thoughts spring from the heart."

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

"There are few things that we know well."

"Constancy is the chimera of love."

"War is not as onerous as servitude."

"Fools never understand people of wit."

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

"Indolence is the sleep of the mind."

"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."

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

"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."

"It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength."

"When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself."

"Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own."

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

"Children are ... encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent."

"Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame."

"If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life."

"La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux."

"As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others."

"Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned."

"It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts."