Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

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.

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.

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.