Francois de La Rochefoucauld — French Writer born on September 15, 1613, died on March 17, 1680

François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it... (wikipedia)

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
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.