Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues Quotes

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.

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.

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

Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.

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.

Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?

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.

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.

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.

The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.

We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, which study and fortune cannot give.

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

Patience is the art of hoping.