Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.

It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.

Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us and others who please us in spite of their faults.

The man whom no one pleases is much more unhappy than the man who pleases no one.

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.

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.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.

It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.

Only strong natures can really be sweet ones; those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.

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.

It is as easy to unknowingly deceive yourself as it is to deceive others.

Great men should not have great faults.

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

The tranquility or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the big things which happen to us in life, as on the pleasant or unpleasant arrangements of the little things which happen daily.

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.

In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.

A clever man reaps some benefit from the worst catastrophe, and a fool can turn even good luck to his disadvantage.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

Fearlessness is a more than ordinary strength of mind, which raises the soul above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which theprospect of great dangers are used to produce. And by this inward strength it is that heroes preserve themselves in a calm and quiet state, and enjoy a presence of mind and the free use of their reason in the midst of those terrible accidents that amaze and confound other people.

We should manage our fortune as we do our health - enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity

There are some people upon whom their very faults and failings sit gracefully; and there are others whose very excellencies and accomplishments do not become them.

A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly.

The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.

There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.

Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.