Francois De La Rochefoucauld Famous Quotes
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We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.
Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
Extreme boredom provides its own antidote.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood; age retains its tastes by habit.
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.
We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.
Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
Bodily labor alleviates the pains of the mind and from this arises the happiness of the poor
Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.
Moderation in people who are contented comes from that calm that good fortune lends to their spirit.
The qualities we have, make us so ridiculous as those which we affect.
Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.
The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.
Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.
We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face
so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
We forgive so long as we love.
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
How deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.
Truth does not do as much good in the world as its imitations do harm.
As love increases, prudence diminishes.
Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.
A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.
Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.
A wise man should order his interests, and set them all in their proper places. This order is often troubled by greed, which putsus upon pursuing so many things at once that, in eagerness for matters of less consideration, we grasp at trifles, and let go things of greater value.
The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
A clever man should handle his interests so that each will fall in suitable order of their value.
Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly.
In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.
Pride has a greater share than goodness in the reproofs we give other people for their faults; and we chide them not so much to make them mend those faults as to make them believe that we ourselves are without fault.
Silence is the best tactic for he who distrusts himself.
A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.
It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.
Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it.
The trust that we put in ourselves makes us feel trust in others.
In love deceit nearly always goes further than mistrust.
Few things are impossible in themselves: application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.
Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design.
We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company.
It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation.
Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other.
The happiness and unhappiness of men depends as much on their ethics as on fortune.
There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.
Absense diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
As we grow older, we increase in folly
and in wisdom.
No man can love a second time the person whom he has once truly ceased to love.
We give advice, we do not inspire conduct.
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
Only great men have great faults.
We should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find the person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent.
136. - There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
267. - A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.
It is harder to hide feelings we have than to feign those we lack.
Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.
I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.
What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.
The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason.
Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.
Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
The only security is courage.
When the philosophers despised riches, it was because they had a mind to vindicate their own merit, and take revenge upon the injustice of fortune by vilifying those enjoyments which she had not given them.
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
He is safe who admits no one to his confidence.
A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly.
We speak little if not egged on by vanity.
There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune;It is a certain manner that distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things;It is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves;it is by this quality,that we gain the deference of other men,and it is this which commonly raises us more above them,than birth,rank,or even merit itself.
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
It is easier for a man to be thought fit for an employment that he has not, than for one he stands already possessed of, and is exercising.
It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.
We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.
The shame that arises from praise which we do not deserve often makes us do things we should otherwise never have attempted.
Women in love sooner forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities.
Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.
The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them.
Fortune never seems so blind to any as to those on whom she bestows no favors.
It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Great names abase, instead of elevating, those who do not know how to bear them.
Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.
Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.
Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.
It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
