Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It requires greater virtues to support good fortune than bad.

We frequently are troublesome to others, when we think it impossible for us ever to be so.

There are some good marriages, but practically no delightful ones.

Nothing should lessen our satisfaction with ourselves as much as when we notice that we disapprove of something at one time that we approve of at another time.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.

There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.

What is called liberality is often merely the vanity of giving.

We can never be certain of our courage until we have faced danger.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.

Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind.

We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.

The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.

The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long.

We often do shallow good in order to accomplish evil with impunity.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.

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.

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.

The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.

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.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

A fashionable woman is always in love - with herself.

Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.

Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others.

We have more indolence in the mind than in the body.

Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.

In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.

The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise.

It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.