Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues Quotes

Great men are sometimes so even in small things.

Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.

We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.

La pensée de la mort nous trompe, car elle nous fait oublier de vivre.

Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.

In order to achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die.

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.

Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.

La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix.

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

Les grandes pensées viennent du coeur.

Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its motives.

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

La modération des grands hommes ne borne que leurs vices. La modération des faibles est médiocrité.

Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.