Luc de Clapiers Quotes

82 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Luc de Clapiers
In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die.

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

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

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

Luc de Clapiers
It is sometimes easier to form a party than to attain by degrees the head of a party already formed.

Luc de Clapiers
We are not greatly pleased that our friends should respect our good qualities if they venture to perceive our faults.

Luc de Clapiers
Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

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

Luc de Clapiers
The tempests of youth are mingled with days of brilliant sunshine.

Luc de Clapiers
There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe.

Luc de Clapiers
The things we know best are those we have not learned.

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

Luc de Clapiers
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.

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

Luc de Clapiers
In order to achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die.

Luc de Clapiers
No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future —that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.

Luc de Clapiers
The world forgives with difficulty the fact that one can be happy without it.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

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

Luc de Clapiers
With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.

Luc de Clapiers
Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

Luc de Clapiers
Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

Luc de Clapiers
Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

Luc de Clapiers
Most men grow old in a little groove of notions which they have not originated: perhaps there are fewer crooked minds than barren ones.

Luc de Clapiers