Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir.
Maxim 199.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“Nothing prevents us being natural so much as the desire to appear so.”
Rien n'empêche tant d'être naturel que l'envie de le paraître.
Maxim 431.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“What often prevents us from abandoning ourselves to one vice is that we have several.”
Ce qui nous empêche souvent de nous abandonner à un seul vice est que nous en avons plusieurs.
Maxim 195.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 146
31
Sovereign Maxims
Variant: Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.
This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.
1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968
“Never be clever for the sake of being clever
For the sake of showing off.”
"So You Want To Write A Fugue", work's text
