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Quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks of what he intends to say than of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Small minds are much distressed by little things. Great minds see them all but are not upset by them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The pleasure of love is in loving.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should manage our fortunes 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.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We pardon to the extent that we love.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Many men are contemptuous of riches few can give them away.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld