Famous Quotes By Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Famous Quotes By Francois de La Rochefoucauld

1. A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
2. A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
3. 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.
4. Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
5. 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.
6. As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
7. Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
8. Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
9. Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
10. Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
11. Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
12. Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
13. Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
14. Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
15. Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
16. However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
17. 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.
18. However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
19. If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
20. If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
21. If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
22. In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
23. In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
24. In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
25. It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
26. It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
27. 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.
28. It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
29. It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
33. Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
34. Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
35. Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
36. 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.
37. Many men are contemptuous of riches few can give them away.
38. Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
39. Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
43. 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.
44. No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
45. Nothing is so contagious as example and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
46. Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
47. Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
48. On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
49. One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
50. One forgives to the degree that one loves.
51. One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
52. Only the contemptible fear contempt.
53. 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.
54. Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
55. Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
56. Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
57. Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
58. Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
59. Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
60. Taste may change, but inclination never.
61. The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
62. The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
63. The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
64. There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
65. There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
66. There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
67. There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.
68. There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
69. There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
70. There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
71. There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
72. They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
73. Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
74. Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
75. 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.
76. 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.
77. To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
78. Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
79. True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
80. We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
81. We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
82. We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
83. We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
84. We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
85. We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
86. We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
87. We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
88. We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.
89. We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
90. We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
91. We pardon to the extent that we love.
92. We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
93. We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
94. We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
95. What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
96. What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
97. When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
98. Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
99. You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.