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François Duc de La Rochefoucauld quotes (81) To know how to hide ones ability is great skill. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Ability What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Generation What the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is in others. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Seek Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Character Happiness and misery depend as much on temperament as on fortune. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Fortune Deprived of the company of fools a great wit does not seem half so clever. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Unsorted The love of Justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering Injustice. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Justice We all have enough strength to bear other peoples woes. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Adversity We easily forget our faults when they are known only to ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Crime There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be thought so. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Wrong Had we ourselves no faults we should find less pleasure discovering them in others. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Complacency When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves that we have left them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Quit In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favours. Note: A saying ascribed to Sir Robert Walpole by Hazlitt in his Wit and Humor: The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours is obviously derived from La Rochefoucauld. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Humor Men have made a virtue of moderation to limit the ambition of the great and to console people of mediocrity for their want of fortune and of merit. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Console We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Fear How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Secret However brilliant an action it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Action Nothing is so contagious as an example. We never do great good or evil without bringing about more of the same on the part of others. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Evil Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Hypocrisy Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Health The most trying fools are the bright ones. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Fool If one judges love by the majority of its effects it is more like hatred than like friendship. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Effect Flattery is counterfeit money which but for vanity would have no circulation. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Flattery What makes us like new acquaintances is not so much any weariness of our old ones or the pleasure of change as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well and the hope of being more so by those who do not know so much of us. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Acquaintance Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Old No persons are more frequently wrong than those who will not admit they are wrong. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Manners A man of wit could often be embarrassed without the company of fools. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Company Perfect virtue consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Capable When not prompted by vanity we say little. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Vanity One is never so happy or so unhappy as one thinks. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Vice The mind cannot long act the role of the heart. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Mind We work so consistently to disguise ourselves to others that we end by being disguised to ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Disguise Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Philosophy Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones as wind blows out candles and fans fire. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Passion Everyone complains of his lack of memory but nobody of his want of judgment. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Everyone Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Confidence Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Courage True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary And nothing but what is necessary. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Speak We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Agreement We come fresh to the different stages of life and in each of them we are quite inexperienced no matter how old we are. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Age Truth does not do so much good in the world As the appearance of it does evil. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Forget It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Wise Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Mediocre We always love those who admire us; we do not always love those whom we admire. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Affection Quarrels would not last so long if the fault were only on one side. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Argument If we have not peace within ourselves it is in vain to seek it from outward sources. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Peace It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Trust If we had no faults ourselves we should not take so much pleasure in remarking them in others. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Fault No accident so grave but that the clever man can turn it to some good; no luck so great but that the fool can twist it to his hurt. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Accidents A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial we miss the most important. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Greed There is only one sort of love but there are a thousand copies. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Imitation Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Death True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Brave The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Ancestors Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure which is useful to praise which deceives them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Crisis Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Endure To establish oneself in the world one does all one can to seem established there already. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Self In the misfortune of our best friends we find something which is not displeasing to us. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Happiness Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Heart The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Gravity In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love to another. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Jealous Nothing is less sincere than our mode of asking and giving advice. He who asks seems to have a deference for the opinion of his friend while he only aims to get approval of his own and make his friend responsible for his action. And he who gives advice repays the confidence supposed to be placed in him by a seemingly disinterested zeal while he seldom means anything by his advice but his own interest or reputation. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Advice Nothing is impossible: there are ways which lead to everything; and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Impossible When we are unable to find tranquillity within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Cannot To safeguard ones health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Diet Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application rather than of means that men fail to succeed. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Success We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Conceit Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Skill We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Behavior We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world only saw the motives which caused them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Motives Man is never less sincere than when he asks or offers advice. When he asks it he seems to defer to the wisdom of his friend but really he seeks approval of his own opinion and to make his friend responsible with him for his actions. When he offers advice he seems to repay the confidence of his inquirer with disinterested zeal while really seeking to bolster his own advantage or reputation. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Alone The qualities we have do not make us so ridiculous as those which we affect to have. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Pretend We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Gratitude Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of its consequences to us. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Regret We should not judge of a man's merit by his good qualities but by the use he can make of them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Merit The pleasure of love is in loving. We are much happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Love The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Envy When our hatred is violent it sinks us even beneath those we hate. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Hate He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks that others cannot do without him is still more mistaken. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: World There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Bad A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and the one which we take the least thought to acquire. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Category: Friendship |
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