Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues: Trending quotes

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

La patience est l’art d’espérer.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.

Hope , Art , Patience

“The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 186.

Truth , Fools , Travel , Soul

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 166.

Love , Nature

“Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its motives.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 171.

Motivation

“Lazy people are always looking for something to do.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

As quoted in Queers in History : The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays (2009), by Keith Stern, p. 466.

People

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 182.

Men

“Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 185.

Love , Men

“Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.

Men , Error

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

People , Idea

“Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 190.

“Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix.
Maxim 592 in Reflections and Maxims (1746), as translated by F. G. Stevens.

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 189.

Men , Pleasure

“Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 183.

Love , Justice

“Great men are sometimes so even in small things.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.

Men

“We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as our virtues.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 175.

Love , Heart , Perfection

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

“When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The art of pleasing is the art of deception.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Art

“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, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.

Men , Age , Art , Science