François de La Rochefoucauld - Maxims

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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
It is a great folly to wish to be wise alone.

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
Only firm people can be truly soft.

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

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

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
Of all violent passions, the least unbecoming to a woman is love.

François de La Rochefoucauld
We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.

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

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

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
There are few honest women who are not tired of what they do.

François de La Rochefoucauld
A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The extreme pleasure we take in talking about ourselves should make us afraid that we may scarcely be giving any to our listeners.

François de La Rochefoucauld
The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.

François de La Rochefoucauld
Preserving your health by too strict a diet is a tedious illness.

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
It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.

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

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

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
We pardon to the extent that we love.

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

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

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

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
Few women's merit lasts as long as their beauty.

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

François de La Rochefoucauld