François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

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Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.

François de La Rochefoucauld
In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The glory of great men should always be measured against the means they used to acquire it.

François de La Rochefoucauld
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

François de La Rochefoucauld
It is more difficult to avoid being ruled than to rule others.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men's faces or their humors do.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Perfect valor is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Some people's faults are becoming to them; others are disgraced by their own good traits.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Those who apply themselves too much to little things often become incapable of great ones.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill.

François de La Rochefoucauld
No one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Sometimes it is pleasant for a husband to have a jealous wife: he always hears what he loves being talked about.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly.

François de La Rochefoucauld
It is a great folly to wish to be wise alone.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is, that they find it dull when they have experienced love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion to certainty.

François de La Rochefoucauld
What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world only saw the motives which caused them.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence, so necessary to man.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Those who know their minds do not know their hearts.

François de La Rochefoucauld
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Luck must be dealt with like health: enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad.

François de La Rochefoucauld