Luc de Clapiers Quotes

82 Sourced Quotes

We quarrel with unfortunates to be exempted from pitying them.

Luc de Clapiers
The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambitions.

Luc de Clapiers
The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.

Luc de Clapiers
It is a great sign of mediocrity to praise always moderately.

Luc de Clapiers
The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of all pleasures.

Luc de Clapiers
The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.

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

Luc de Clapiers
As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things. Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.

Luc de Clapiers
Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.

Luc de Clapiers
Young people suffer less from their faults than from the prudence of the old.

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

Luc de Clapiers
He who knows how to suffer everything can risk everything.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

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

Luc de Clapiers
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

Luc de Clapiers
It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves.

Luc de Clapiers
You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

Luc de Clapiers
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.

Luc de Clapiers
We should expect the best and the worst from mankind, as from the weather.

Luc de Clapiers
It is proof of a narrow mind when things worthy of esteem are distinguished from things worthy of love. Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem.

Luc de Clapiers
The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.

Luc de Clapiers