Francois de La Rochefoucauld Happiness Quotations

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.

We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.

Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.

One is never as happy or as unhappy as one thinks.

The happiness and unhappiness of men depends as much on their ethics as on fortune.

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things.

If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.

We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.

Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.

The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.