François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

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Silence is the surest resolve for him who distrusts himself.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The defects and faults in the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There is scarcely a single man sufficiently aware to know all the evil he does.

François de La Rochefoucauld
It is less dangerous to treat most men badly than to treat them too well.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Few women's merit lasts as long as their beauty.

François de La Rochefoucauld
However rare true love may be, true friendship is rarer.
Variant: Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer

François de La Rochefoucauld
Thousands of people with good qualities are displeasing; thousands pleasing with far less abilities, and why? Because the first wish to appear to be what they are not, the second are what they appear. Some of the advantages or disadvantages that we have received from nature please in proportion as we know the air, the style, the manner, the sentiments that coincide with our condition and our appearance, and displease in the proportion they are removed from that point.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Folly pursues us throughout our lives, and the man whom we call wise is he whose follies are proportionate to his age and to his fortune.

François de La Rochefoucauld
In their first passion, women love their lovers; in all the others, they love love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Some women are so just and discerning that they never see an opportunity to be generous.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Youth is a perpetual intoxication; it is a fever of the mind

François de La Rochefoucauld
Virtue would not go nearly so far if vanity did not keep her company.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Absence diminishes commonplace passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There are foolish people who recognize their foolishness and use it skillfully.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Absence diminishes weak passions and augments great ones; as the wind extinguishes tapers, but increases a conflagration.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Absence lessens the minor passions and increases the great ones, as the wind douses a candle and kindles a fire.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There are people enough who despise money, but few who know how to bestow it.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The virtuous woman who falls in love is much to be pitied.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There are many predicaments in life that one must be a bit crazy to escape from.

François de La Rochefoucauld
If we judge love by the majority of its results, it resembles hatred more than friendship.

François de La Rochefoucauld
There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.

François de La Rochefoucauld
He who is never guilty of follies is not so wise as he imagines.

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

François de La Rochefoucauld
Absence extinguishes the minor passions and increases the great ones, as the wind blows out a candle and fans a fire.

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

François de La Rochefoucauld
We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done.

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