François de La Rochefoucauld - People Quotes

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Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

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

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

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

François de La Rochefoucauld

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

François de La Rochefoucauld

There are foolish people who recognize their foolishness and use it skillfully.

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

Only firm people can be truly soft.

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

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

François de La Rochefoucauld

The same force which serves to resist love also makes it strong and lasting; and weak people, who are always shaken by passions, are almost never fulfilled by them.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Most people judge men only by their success or their good fortune.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Nothing makes old people who have been attractive more ridiculous than to forget that they are so no longer.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples.

François de La Rochefoucauld

We rarely find that people have good sense unless they agree with us.

François de La Rochefoucauld

There are people who would never be in love had they not heard [others] speak of love.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Self-interest, which blinds some people, brings light to others.

François de La Rochefoucauld

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.

François de La Rochefoucauld

There are people whose defects become them, and others who are ill served by their good qualities.

François de La Rochefoucauld

People by whom one must not be bored are almost always boring.

François de La Rochefoucauld

There are few people who are more often wrong than those who cannot suffer being wrong.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

François de La Rochefoucauld

The reason that there are so few good conversationalists is that most people are thinking about what they are going to say and not about what the others are saying.

François de La Rochefoucauld