There are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
Passion is always suffering, even when gratified.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Great possessions and great want of them are both strong temptations.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
John Osborne
Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
William Shakespeare
Pity is love in undress.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
Honore de Balzac
Politeness is organized indifference.
Paul Valery
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
Albert Camus
Beautiful clothes are a sign of joy.
Joseph Joubert
Emotions have taught mankind to reason.
Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues
Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
Stendhal
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar Wilde
Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and our misery.
David Hume
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
Blaise Pascal
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
Gustave Flaubert
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
Agatha Christie
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert
The passions of the young are vices in the old.
Joseph Joubert
If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.
Jean de La Bruyere
A grand passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Oscar Wilde
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
Jean de La Bruyere
The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.
George Eliot
The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Too much sensibility creates unhappiness, too much insensibility creates crime.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
The only thing that should astonish us is that we are still capable of astonishment.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Niccolo Machiavelli
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one`s work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
Ernest Hemingway
Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.
Joseph Addison
Absence diminishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
Jean de La Bruyere
Hatred is active and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.
Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
Aristotle
Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion to certainty.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
Mae West
Peace visits not the guilty mind.
Decimus Junius Juvenal
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
Joseph Joubert