1651-1715, French Writer
All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
Francois FTNelon – [Spirit and Spirituality]
Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.
Francois FTNelon – [Children]
Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.
Francois FTNelon – [Friends and Friendship]
Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
Francois FTNelon – [Detail]
Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.
Francois FTNelon – [Complaints and Complaining]
How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.
Francois FTNelon – [Devotions]
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
Francois FTNelon – [Books and Reading]
If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.
Francois FTNelon – [Failure]
Little opportunities should be improved.
Francois FTNelon – [Opportunity]
Most people I ask little from. I try to give them much, and expect nothing in return and I do very well in the bargain.
Francois FTNelon – [Negotiation]
Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.
Francois FTNelon – [Self-examination]
The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.
Francois FTNelon – [Brevity]
The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.
Francois FTNelon – [Past]