All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing: not knowing how to remain at rest in a room. - Blaise Pascal

S'il se vante, je l'abaisse;
s'il s'abaisse, je le vante;
et le contredis toujours,
jusqu'à qu'il comprenne
qu'il est un monstre incompréhensible.

To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it makes them disliked.

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. ...let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.