Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them. ”

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example. ”

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love. ”

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness. ”

In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another. ”

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures. ”

If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves. ”

If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection. ”

It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved. ”

The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken. ”