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)

Date: 1665

"And indeed, the Thoughts of many a Person, are oftentimes so active, and restless, that something or other they must, and will perpetually be doing; and like unruly Souldiers, if you have not a care to employ them well, they will employ themselves ill."

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1665

"Which last Expression suits very well with the present case, since, when a pious Soul is once got upon the wing of Contemplation, she must descend and stoop to exchange her converse with Heavenly objects, for one with Earthly vanities, and much more must she debase and degrade her self, if the t...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)