Luc de Clapiers
Luc de Clapiers
Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargueswas a minor French writer, a moralist. He died at age 31, in broken health, having published the year prior—anonymously—a collection of essays and aphorisms with the encouragement of Voltaire, his friend. He first received public notice under his own name in 1797, and from 1857 on, his aphorisms became popular. In the history of French literature, his significance lies chiefly in his friendship with Voltaire...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth6 August 1715
CountryFrance
Excessive distrust is not less hurtfJul than its opposite. Most men become useless to him who is unwilling to risk being deceived.
We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the lukewarm approval of men of intelligence.
You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.
Great men, like nature, use simple language.
Our opinion of others is not so variable as our opinion of ourselves.
Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?
As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.
Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.
Great men are sometimes so even in small things.
If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.
Nothing but courage can guide life.
There are men who are happy without knowing it.
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.