The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Interpretation
Good advice often comes from those who have learned from their mistakes over time.
This quote by Francois De La Rochefoucauld suggests that individuals who have lived long enough have likely made their share of mistakes and learned valuable lessons from them. Thus, their advice is rooted in experience rather than theoretical knowledge, and it serves to steer others away from the errors they themselves have made.
In practice
During a graduation speech, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of learning from life experiences.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
He who never puts his trust in any man will never be deceived.
She knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
Men develop ideas and systems of explanation by absorbing past knowledge and critiquing and superseding it. Women, ignorant of their own history [do] not know what women before them had thought and taught. So generation after generation, they [struggle] for insights others had already had before them, [resulting in] the constant inventing of the wheel.
I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw
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