François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
Preserving your health by too strict a diet is a tedious illness.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Hope and fear go arm in arm: there is no fear without hope, no hope without fear.

François de La Rochefoucauld
One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire to receive even greater benefits.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the majority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They are changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should imitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are not.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is merit without attainment, but no attainment without some merit.

François de La Rochefoucauld
In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The accent of one's birthplace lingers in the mind and in the heart as it does in one's speech.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We pardon to the extent that we love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
It is difficult to define love. In the soul it is a passion to rule; in the mind it is sympathy; and in the body it is only a hidden and tactful desire to possess what we love after many mysteries.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

François de La Rochefoucauld
What grace is to the body, good sense is to the mind.

François de La Rochefoucauld
It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We are often more treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

François de La Rochefoucauld
To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

François de La Rochefoucauld
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.

François de La Rochefoucauld
A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Humility is often only a feigned submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride.

François de La Rochefoucauld
If we had no defects, we should not take so much pleasure in discovering those of others.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We are all strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There are good marriages, but no delicious ones.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Fortunate people seldom mend their ways, for when good luck crowns their misdeeds with success they think it is because they are right.

François de La Rochefoucauld