Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.

Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope.

Organize one's values in the order of their worth

We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.

It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections.

There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.

The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.

It is not enough that we should succeed, but our friends must fail as well.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer Him His sacrifices.

Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.

We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices.

We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.

Generosity is the vanity of giving.

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.

It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.

He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.

A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it.

Praise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit; the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

There are several remedies which will cure love, but there are no infallible ones.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.

A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.

Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.

To think to be wise alone is a very great folly.

It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts

We always like those who admire us.

It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love-Plus many mysteries.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

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.

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.