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
The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.
Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.
The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.
The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.
Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.
It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.
There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.
It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves.
A man can hardly be said to have made a fortune if he does not know how to enjoy it.
Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, F?nelon -- that is to say, some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages -- have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Cond?, when dying, repeated these noble words, "Yes, I shall see God as He is, face to face!".
We must expect everything and fear everything from time and from men.
In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.
I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.
Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.