Vauvenargues Quotes

More are taken in by love than by cunning.

There are many things we despise in order that we may not have to despise ourselves.

Nothing but courage can guide life.

What we call a brilliant thought is usually just a captivating expression which, with the help of a little truth, imposes a surprising error on us.

Great thoughts come from the heart

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

Clarity is the counterbalance of profound thoughts.

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

Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practise it from self-interest.

La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix. Necessity delivers us from the difficulty of choice.

Svetlana said that she identified with that Madonna more than with any other woman in any other painting. She kept asking me what painting I identified with. I didn't identify with anyone in any paintings. I finally identified with a painting in the Picasso Museum. Titled Le Buffet de Vauvenargues, it showed a gigantic black sideboard [...] Svetlana said I had to take a more proactive view of my personhood. She said it wasn't okay to identify with furniture. Indeed, Sartre had illustrated "bad faith" using the analogy of thinking of oneself as a chair -- quite specifically, a chair. Objective claims could be made about a chair, but not about a person, because a person was in constant flux. I said the buffet was also in flux.

The lazy are always wanting to do something.

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

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

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

However we may be reproached for our vanity we sometimes need to be assured of our merits and to have our most obvious advantages pointed out to us.

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

Най-ненавистният вид неблагодарност, но същевременно и най-обикновената и най-изконна е неблагодарността на децата към родителите.

War is less burdensome than servitude.

Ou tout est dépendant, il y a un maître: l'air appartient à l'homme, et l'homme à l'air; et rien n'est à soi, ni à part.

VAUVENARGUES says that certain avenues in the public parks are haunted almost exclusively by disappointed ambitions, frustrated inventors, abortive glories, and broken hearts, by all those tumultuous and secret souls still agitated by the last rumblings of the storm, who withdraw as far as possible from the insolent eyes of the gay and the idle. These shady retreats are the meeting places of all those whom life has maimed.

Je désirerais de tout mon coeur que toutes les conditions fussent égales ; j’aimerais beaucoup mieux n’avoir point d’inférieurs, que de reconnaître un seul homme au-dessus de moi Rien n’est si spécieux, dans la spéculation, que l’égalité ; mais rien n’est plus impraticable et plus chimérique.

Ceux qui combattent les préjugés du peuple croient n’être pas peuple : un homme qui avait fait à Rome un argument contre les poulets sacrés, se regardait peut-être comme un philosophe ; mais les vrais philosophes se moquaient d’un fou qui attaquait inutilement les opinions du peuple, et César, qui, probablement, ne croyait pas aux aruspices, ne laissa pas d’en faire un traité

Entre rois, entre peuples, entre particuliers, le plus fort se done des droits sur le plus faible, et la même règle est suivie par les animaux, par la matière, par les èlèments, etc., de sorte que tout s'exècute dans l'univers par la violence; et cet ordre, que nous blâmons avec quelque apparance de justice, est la loi la plus gènèrale, la plus absolue, la plus immuable, et la plus ancienne de la nature.

A arte de agradar é a arte de enganar.

Yes, I know Marcus Aurelius or Vauvenargues or Chesterton has already said this, and far better; but let’s face it — you weren’t listening then either.

Le monde est un grand bal où chacun est masqué.

Voltaire was so engrossed in the struggle against ecclesiastical tyranny that during the later decades of his life he was compelled almost to withdraw from the war on political corruption and oppression. “Politics is not in my line: I have always confined myself to doing my little best to make men less foolish and more honorable.” He knew how complex a matter political philosophy can become, and he shed his certainties as he grew. “I am tired of all these people who govern states from the recesses of their garrets”;95 “these legislators who rule the world at two cents a sheet; . . . unable to govern their wives or their households they take great pleasure in regulating the universe.”96 It is impossible to settle these matters with simple and general formulae, or by dividing all people into fools and knaves on the one hand, and on the other, ourselves. “Truth has not the name of a party”; and he writes to Vauvenargues: “It is the duty of a man like you to have preferences, but not exclusions.”97

A truly new and original book would be one which made people love old truths.   —MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES

Servitude degrades men even to making them love it

Miss Mason had a genius for education. She had an inbred good sense and an unfatigued sensibility. Her mind was tempered by great literature. She loved the humanities. She had a very distinguished gift of leadership in cooperation. There was a tenderness, a humility in her self-confidence which recalled Vauvenargues’ saying that ‘great thoughts come from the heart.

the world is a big ball where everyone wears a mask.

There are vices which do not exclude great qualities, and consequently there are great qualities which stand apart from virtue. I recognize this truth with sorrow....(But) those who wish men to be altogether good or altogether evil do not know nature. In men all is mixed; everything there is limited; and even vice has its limits

The passions have taught reason to man. In the infancy of all peoples, as in that of individuals, feeling has always preceded reflection and has been its first master

We pay dearly for the smallest goods, when we only get them from reason.

The passions have taught reason to man

We achieve few great things by deliberation

Reason misleads us more often than nature

Great thoughts spring from the heart

It is easier to say new things than to reconcile what has already been said.

Conscience is commanding in the strong, timid in the weak and the unhappy, restless in the undecided. It is a faculty which obeys our dominant feelings and ruling opinions

The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under pretext of freeing mankind from the toils of passion, counsels indifference, resignation and self-forgetfulness

The mind is the soul's eye, not its source of power. That lies in the heart, in other words in the passions. The most enlightened judgement does not give rise to action or desire. Is good sight enough to enable us to walk? Must we not also have feet, and the will and power to move them?

None are more prone to error than those who act only on reflection

There is perhaps no truth, which is not a cause of error to some misguided mind

Many well-grounded hopes and fears are disappointed

Hope inspires the wise, and deludes the presumptuous and the idle, who rely blindly on its promises

Il n’est pas facile de changer son cœur, mais il est encore plus difficile de détourner le cours rapide et puissant des choses humaines ; c’est donc principalement sur nous que nous devons travailler, et la véritable grandeur se trouve dans ce travail. La pompe et les prospérités d’une fortune éclatante n’ont jamais élevé personne aux yeux de la vertu et de la vérité ; l’âme est grande par ses pensées et par ses propres sentiments, le reste lui est étranger ; cela seul est en son pouvoir. Mais lorsqu’il lui est refusé d’étendre au dehors son action, elle l’exerce en elle-même, d’une manière inconnue aux esprits faibles et légers, que l’action du corps seul occupe. Semblables à des somnambules qui parlent et qui marchent en dormant, ces derniers ne connaissent point cette suite impétueuse et féconde de pensées, qui forment un si vif sentiment dans le cœur des hommes profonds.

Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucian, or the poets: Juvenal, Horace, or the later French so-called “moralists” (La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, La Bruyère, Chamfort). Bossuet is a class on his own. One can use Montaigne and Erasmus as a portal to the ancients: Montaigne was the popularizer of his day; Erasmus was the thorough compiler.

Lorsqu'une pensée est trop faible pour porter une expression simple, c'est la marque pour la rejeter