Date: 1665

"Defects in the soul are like wounds in the body: whatever care is taken to heal them the scars always show"

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"There is no passion in which love of self rules so despotically as love, and we are always more inclined to sacrifice the loved one's tranquillity than to lose our own."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Youth is one long intoxication; it is reason in a fever."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Absence lessens moderate passions and intensifies great ones, as the wind blows out a candle but fans up a fire"

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"The accent of one's birthplace persists in the mind and heart as much as in speech."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1669

"Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait."

— Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"The writers displayed many geometrical truths before my very eyes, as it were, and derived them by means of logical arguments"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"For the human mind has within it a sort of spark of the divine, in which the first seeds of useful ways of thinking are sown, seeds which, however neglected and stifled by studies which impede them, often bear fruit of their own accord."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"But since it is not easy to review all the connections together, and moreover, since our task is not so much to retain them in our memory as to distinguish them with, as it were, the sharp edge of our mind, we must seek a means of developing our intelligence in such a way that we can discern the...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)