Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.

There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill.

Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

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.

When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.

If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill.

We should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.

A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

The fame of great men ought to be judged always by their big, fancy names.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time - unless she happens to take a second.

We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind. This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all the effects which we attribute to judgment.

The man who leaves a woman best pleased with herself is the one whom she will soonest wish to see.

One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful-and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have.

We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.

Death, like the sun, cannot be looked at steadily.

The older a fool is, the worse he is.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.

It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.

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.

Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.

There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

Sometimes, occasions occur in life which demand you to be a little foolish in order to skillfully extricate yourself.

We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.

One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun.

Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.

A man is sometimes better off deceived about the one he loves, than undeceived.

It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.

Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.

Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.

The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.

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.

The trust that we put in ourselves makes us feel trust in others.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.

The only security is courage.

Every one complains of a poor memory, no one of a weak judgment.