François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

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

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
We should make it a rule never to have half confidences. They always embarrass those who give them, and dissatisfy those who receive them. They shed an uncertain light on what we want hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to know more, giving them leave to consider themselves free to talk of what they have guessed. It is far safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be silent when we have begun to tell.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is a difference between an ardent and a brilliant mind, a fiery spirit travels further and faster, while a brilliant mind is sparkling, attractive, accurate.

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
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
We may give advice, but we do not inspire conduct.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Only firm people can be truly soft.

François de La Rochefoucauld
As we age, we become more foolish and wiser.

François de La Rochefoucauld
All men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek for an air other than their own, and a mind different from what they possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is but one kind of love, but there are a thousand different copies of it.

François de La Rochefoucauld