La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Few things are impossible in themselves: application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The pleasure of love is in loving. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A fashionable woman is always in love - with herself. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Only the great can afford to have great defects. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Some people resemble ballads which are only sung for a certain time. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

That which occasions so many mistakes in the computations of men, when they expect return for favors, is that the giver's pride and the receiver's cannot agree upon the value of the kindness done. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The world more often rewards the appearances of merit than merit itself. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We would often be ashamed of our best actions if the world only knew the motives behind them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Ability wins us the esteem of the true men; luck, that of the people. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are many predicaments in life that one must be a bit crazy to escape from. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Considering how little the beginning or the ceasing to love is in our own power, it is foolish and unreasonable for the lover or his mistress to complain of one another's inconstancy. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The highest skill is the true judgment of values. ~ Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

324. - There is more self-love than love in jealousy. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nothing is more ridiculous in old people that were once good-looking, than to forget that they are not so still. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Cunning and treachery proceed from want of capacity. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

To be a great man it is necessary to know how to profit by the whole of our good fortune. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We should not be much concerned about faults we have the courage to own. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What is called liberality is often merely the vanity of giving. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly beloved." - Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.] ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

201. - He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content with him deceives himself yet more. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

329. - We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery - we only dislike the method. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is with true love as with ghosts. Every one talks of it but few have seen it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is at least as much eloquence in the voice, eyes, and air of a speaker as in his choice of words. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Fortune and humor govern the world. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Sometimes a fool has talent, but never judgment. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved
sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest
so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks.
[Fr., Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.] ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld