Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

When I write that I've known about something for a long time, that's not a boast. That's a confession. It's me acknowledging that I have withheld something important from the public.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.