Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship."

"In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge."

"We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears."

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."

"What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love."