The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

The reason why most women are little touched by friendship is that friendship is insipid to those who have felt what love is.

II.—Friendship

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something that does not displease us.

Rare as true love is, it is less rare than true friendship.

What makes us so changing in our friendships is that it is difficult to discern the qualities of the soul, and easy to recognize the qualities of the mind.

It is equally difficult to have a friendship for those whom we do not esteem as for those we esteem more than ourselves.

We love those who admire us, not those whom we admire.

Most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendship; still, a man may make occasional use of them, as in a business where the profits are uncertain and it is usual to be cheated.

It is more dishonourable to mistrust a friend than to be deceived by him.

We are fond of exaggerating the love our friends bear us, but it is less from a feeling of gratitude than from a desire to advertise our own merits.

What usually hinders us from revealing the depths of our hearts to our friends is not so much the distrust which we have of them as the distrust that we have of ourselves.

We confess our little defects merely to persuade our friends that we have no great failings.

The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our defects to a friend, but to make him see his own.

Sincerity is an opening of the heart. It is found in exceedingly few people, and what passes for it is only a subtle dissimulation used to attract confidence.

We can love nothing except in relation to ourselves, and we merely follow our own bent and pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves; yet it is only by this preference that friendship can be made true and perfect.

It seems as if self-love is the dupe of kindness and that it is forgotten while we are working for the benefit of other men. In this case, however, our self-love is merely taking the safest road to arrive at its ends; it is lending at usury under the pretext of giving, it is aiming at winning all the world by subtle and delicate means.

The first impulses of joy excited in us by the good fortune of our friends proceed neither from our good nature nor from the friendship we have for them; it is an effect of self-love that flatters us with the hope either of being fortunate in our turn or of drawing some advantage from their prosperity.

What makes us so eager to form new acquaintances is not the mere pleasure of change or a weariness of old friendships, so much as a disgust at not being enough admired by those who know us too well, and a hope of winning more admiration from persons who do not know much about us.

III.—Things of the Mind

The mind is always the dupe of the heart. Those who are acquainted with their own mind are not acquainted with their own heart.

The mind is more indolent than the body.

It is the mark of fine intellects to explain many things in a few words; little minds have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

We speak but little when vanity does not make us speak.

A spirit of confidence helps on conversation more than brilliance of mind does.

True eloquence consists of saying all that is necessary, and nothing more.

A man may be witty and still be a fool; judgment is the source of wisdom.

A man does not please for very long when he has but one kind of wit.

It is a mistake to imagine that wit and judgment are two distinct things; judgment is only the perfection of wit, which pierces into the recesses of things and there perceives what from the outside seems to be imperceptible.

A man of intelligence would often be at a loss were it not for the company of fools.

It is not so much fertility of mind that leads us to discover many expedients in regard to a single matter, as a defect of intelligence, that makes us stop at everything presented to our imagination, and hinders us from discerning at once which is the best course.

Some old men like to give good advice to console themselves for being no longer in a state to give a bad example.

No man of sound good sense strikes us as such unless he is of our way of thinking.

Stiffness of opinion comes from pettiness of mind; we do not easily believe in anything that is beyond our range of vision.

Good taste is based on judgment rather than on intelligence.

It is more often through pride than through any want of enlightenment that men set themselves stubbornly to oppose the most current opinions; finding all the best places taken on the popular side, they do not want those in the rear.

In order to understand things well one must know the detail of them; and as this is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.

It is never so difficult to talk well as when we are ashamed of our silence.

The excessive pleasure we feel in talking about ourselves ought to make us apprehensive that we afford little to our listeners.

Truth has not done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done harm.

Man's chief wisdom consists in being sensible of his follies.

IV.—Human Life and Human Nature