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]