Jean de La Fontaine's Quotes

I bend and do not break.

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

One often has need of one, inferior to himself.

A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better.

But the shortest works are always the best.

Every flatterer lives at the expense of him who listens to him.

It is impossible to please all the world and one's father.

Luck's always to blame.

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

Never sell the bear's skin before one has killed the beast.

One returns to the place one came from.

People must help one another; it is nature's law.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

The argument of the strongest is always the best.

The fastidious are unfortunate; nothing satisfies them.

The strongest passion is fear.

There is nothing useless to men of sense.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.

We read on the foreheads of those who are surrounded by a foolish luxury, that fortune sells what she is thought to give.

Patience and time do more than strength or passion.

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life.

Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.