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
Wicked people are always surprised to find ability in those that are good.
Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.
If people did not compliment one another there would be little society.
The fool is like those people who think themselves rich with little.
Few people are modest enough to be estimated at their true worth.
Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.
Lazy people always intend to start doing something.
You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.
Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it.
Truth is not so threadbare as speech, because fewer people can make use of it.
Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.
Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.
Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.
The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.