These old French sayings can help you choose a New Year's resolution

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Historic quotes from clever Frenchmen may be just the thing you need to make a New Year’s resolution.

If you’re ready for some life advice from French geniuses, you've come to the right place.

François de La Rochefoucauld

• Passion often makes fools of clever men; sometimes even makes clever men of fools.
• Death and the sun are two things no man can outstare.
• Good fortune soothes the temper.
• We all have strength to bear the misfortunes of our neighbors.
• We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
• We praise in others what we find in ourselves; true friendship grows when our self-esteem is flattered by mutual agreement in tastes and pleasures.
• True love is like a ghost: everyone talks of it, but few have met it face to face.
• Everyone blames his memory; no one blames his judgment.
• A great name degrades rather than exalts those unworthy to bear it.
• Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
• We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all.
• If people could see our motives, we should often be ashamed of our noblest actions.

Honoré de Balzac

• The more one judges, the less one loves.
• Discouragement is of all ages: in youth it is a presentiment, in old age a remembrance.
• A weapon is anything that can serve to wound; and sentiments are perhaps the most cruel weapons man can employ to wound his fellow man.
• It costs more to satisfy a vice than to feed a family.
• Happiness is worth more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every evening in Parish.

Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort

• We have three kinds of friends: those who love us, those who are indifferent to us, and those who hate us.
• Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
• The loves of some people are but the result of good suppers.
• There are more fools than sages; and among the sages, there is more folly than wisdom.
• There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
• False modesty is the most reputable of all impostures.
• Celebrity is the chastisement of merit, and the punishment of talent.
• He who can not govern his passions should kill them, as we kill a horse when we can not master it.
• There is no history worthy of attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

Joseph Joubert

• Space is the stature of God.
• To know what we must do is good sense; to know what we must think is intelligence.
• There are minds like convex and concave mirrors which reflect objects just as they receive them, but which never reflect them just as they are.
• Good manners and cheerful greetings are cards of invitation that circulate in all seasons.
• To be interested in little things as well as in great, to be as ready for the one as for the other, is not weakness and littleness, but power and sufficiency.
• Minds that never rest are more than likely to go astray.
• Though there are many moments hostile to truth, time and truth are friends.

François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

• A republic is not founded on virtue, but on the ambition of its citizens.
• Jest with life: that is all it's good for.
• It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty, but it does depend upon us to make that poverty respected.
• Moderation is a pleasure of the wise.
• All thinkers have about the same principles, and form but one republic.
• Poetry is the music of the soul.
• When truth is disliked and reason is feared, a well-turned compliment succeeds better than inspired eloquence.
• Shun idleness: it is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
• Fine eyes to the face are what eloquence is to speech.

Marguerite De Valois

• The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is.
• A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do herself.
• It is because honesty will soon be scarce that we must use it to deceive the deceivers.
• The true and the false speak the same language.
• Love works miracles every day; such as tweaking the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a world, turning everything topsy-turvy.
• We shall all be virtuous when there is no longer any flesh on our bones.
• No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures.