“To accomplish great things we must live as though we had never to die.”

— Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims (1746), tr. E. Lee (1903)

About Vauvenargues

1715 – 1747

French moralist, author of "Reflections and Maxims" (1746).

“Patience is the art of hoping.”

“Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.”

“Those who continually slander, rarely do injury: they imagine more evil than they can accomplish.”

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”

“A living dog is better than a dead lion.”

“The life of the dead is in the memory of the living.”

“A useless life is an early death.”

“The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.”

“Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.”