Vauvenargues Quotes

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success.

Patience is the art of hoping.

The lazy are always wanting to do something.

The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.

Prosperity makes few friends.

Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.

He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.

All men are born truthful and die liars.

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

Simple truths are a relief from grand speculations.

Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.

The mind reaches great heights only by spurts.

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

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

There are men who are happy without knowing it.

When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance.

Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.

Nothing but courage can guide life.

Vice stirs up war virtue fights.

The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.

Great men undertake great things because they are great fools because they think them easy.

When an idea is too weak to support a simple statement it is a sign that it should be rejected.

If virtue were its own reward it would no longer be a human quality but supernatural.

Great thoughts always come from the heart.

No one is more liable to make mistakes than the man who acts only on reflection.

Generosity gives assistance rather than advice.

Action makes more fortunes than caution.

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

We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions.

If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself I reply: Because I have been wrong once or oftener I do not aspire to be always wrong.

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

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