Luc de clapiers quotes

Commerce is the school of cheating.

Jealousy is the paralysis of love.

None are more liable to mistakes than those who act only on second thoughts.

A man can hardly be said to have made a fortune if he does not know how to enjoy it.

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success.

The young suffer less from their own errors than from the cautiousness of the old.

In order to do great things, it is necessary to live as if one was never to die.

Those who can bear all can dare all.

If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute it.

Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.

A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: he who knows how to make skilful use of the truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone pride himself in cleverness.

Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

As a house implies a builder, and a garment a weaver, and a door a carpenter, so does the existence of the Universe imply a Creator.

He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.

We are dismayed when we find that even disaster cannot cure us of our faults.

The mind is the soul's eye, not its source of power. That lies in the heart, in other words, in the passions.

Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.

Nothing but courage can guide life.

Patience is the art of hoping.

Hatred is keener than friendship, less keen than love.

Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.

The mind of man is more intuitive than logical, and comprehends more than it can coordinate.

Action makes more fortune than caution.

When we feel that we lack whatever is needed to secure someone else's esteem, we are very close to hating him

Consciousness of our strength increases it.

To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die.

It is not in everyone's power to secure wealth, office, or honors; but everyone may be good, generous, and wise.

If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself, I shall reply; I have been wrong once or more often, however I do not aspire to be always wrong.

We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them.

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.

Necessity embitters the evils which it cannot cure.

If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just 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 impulse 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 endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.

Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it.

Hope is the only good thing that disillusion respects.

The fool is like those people who think themselves rich with little.

Whoever has seen the masked at a ball dance amicably together, and take hold of hands without knowing each other, leaving the next moment to meet no more, can form an idea of the world.

All that is unfair, offends us if it's not beneficial for us

You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.

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

Reason deceives us more often than does nature.

Indolence is the sleep of the mind.

Hatred and dishonesty generally arises from fear of being deceived.

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.

Generosity gives assistance, rather than advice.

The wicked are always surprised to find that the good can be clever.

Consciousness of our powers augments them.

The idle always have a mind to do something.

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

Clarity is the counterbalance of profound thoughts.

It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.

Hope deceives more men than cunning does.

One can not be just if one is not humane.

One promises much, to avoid giving little.

Those who fear men like laws.

There are those who are so scrupulously afraid of doing wrong that they seldom venture to do anything.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary, maintain that they ought to be praised in their lifetime if they merit it; but jealousy and calumny, roused against their virtue or their talent, labour to degrade them if any one ventures to bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise.

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

All grand thoughts come from the heart.

Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

In a way, the main fault of all books is that they are too long.

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves.

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

We can console ourselves for not having great talents as we console ourselves for not having great places. We can be above both in our hearts.

Despair exaggerates not only our misery but also our weakness.

Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.

We are almost always guilty of the hate we encounter.

Great men, like nature, use simple language.

The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of pleasures.

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

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.

No one likes to be pitied for his faults.

More are taken in by hope than by cunning.

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

Persevere in the fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful.

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

You are not born for fame if you don't know the value of time.

Few men have depth enough to hear or tell the truth.

We should expect the best and the worst from mankind as from the weather.

We must expect everything and fear everything from time and from men.

We discover in ourselves what others hide from us and we recognize in others what we hide from ourselves.

The heaviest object in the world is the body of the woman you have ceased to love.

Despair is the greatest of our errors.

To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.

The maxims of men reveal their characters.

To withdraw ourselves from the law of the strong, we have found ourselves obliged to submit to justice. Justice or might, we must choose between these two masters.

Fools do not understand men of intelligence.

Everyone is born sincere and dies deceivers.

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

Habit is everything, even in love.

I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.

Give help rather than advice.

Courage is adversity's lamp.

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.

If people did not compliment one another there would be little society.

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.

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

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

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

Children are taught to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches children economy, arrogance, or submission. They are also encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already only too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent.

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.

The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.

A new principle is an inexhaustible source of new views.

Prosperity makes few friends.

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

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection admits a sacrifice.

If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.

Constancy is the chimera of love.

Activity makes more men's fortunes than cautiousness.

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

The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, F?nelon -- that is to say, some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages -- have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Cond?, when dying, repeated these noble words, "Yes, I shall see God as He is, face to face!".

We must not be timid from a fear of committing faults: the greatest fault of all is to deprive oneself of experience.

Emotions have taught mankind to reason.

The lazy are always wanting to do something.

Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.

Our opinion of others is not so variable as our opinion of ourselves.

Superficial knowledge ... is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

The best things are the most common.

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.

There is nothing that fear and hope does not permit men to do.

Servitude debases men to the point where they end up liking it.