Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.

Our hopes, often though they deceive us, lead us pleasantly along the path of life.

Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.

We pardon as long as we love.

Even women are perfect at the outset.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

The constancy of the wise is only the art of keeping disquietude to one's self.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it merely aims at keeping something that belongs to us or we think belongsto us, whereas envy is a frenzy that cannot bear anything that belongs to others.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.

No matter how much care we put into hiding our passions under the appearances of devotion and honor, they can always be seen to peer out through these covers.

Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily; and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation.

Our wisdom is no less at fortune's mercy than our wealth.

None but great men are capable of having great flaws.

Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.

Jealousy is not love, but self-love.

There is merit without rank, but there is no rank without some merit.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.

When our hatred is too alive puts us below what we hate.

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

Sometimes a fool has talent, but never judgment.

It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination.

The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another.

Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]

Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.

When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.

It is worth nothing to be young without being beautiful, nor to be beautiful without being young.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.

Men frequently do good only to give themselves opportunity of doing ill with impunity.

A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing.

L'absence diminue les mediocres passions, et augmente les grandes,comme le vent eteint les bougies, et allume le feu. Absence diminishes commonplace passions, and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.

If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.

Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.