Related:

• Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good office
  it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something. (Maxim 83)...
• 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....
• True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 76...
• The understanding is always the dupe of the heart.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 102...
• We pardon in the degree that we love.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 330...
• The love of justice is simply, in the majority of men, the fear of suffering injustice.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 78...
• The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 416...
• Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 212...
• Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
  -- Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- Maxim 496...