Date: 1665

"Condemned men sometimes affect a steadfastness and indifference to death which is really only fear of looking death in the face; thus it can be said that this steadfastness and indifference do for their spirit what the bandage does for their eyes."

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

Date: 1665

"Discernment is simply a great light of the intellect which shines into the roots of things, sees everything worth noticing, and perceives things thought to be imperceptible."

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

Date: 1665

"The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease."

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

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: 1665

"If I had not elsewhere display'd the Evil and Danger of Idleness, and represented it as a thing, which, though we should admit not to be in it self a sin, yet may easily prove a greater mischief than a very great one, by at once tempting the Tempter to tempt us, and exposing the empty Soul, like...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1665

"And, as the Exercise, I would perswade, will help to keep us from Idleness, so will it, to preserve us from harbouring evil Thoughts, which there is no such way to keep out of the Soul, as to keep her taken up with good ones; as Husbandmen, to rid a piece of rank Land of Weeds, do often find it ...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)