Top 1115 Quotes & Sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld.
Last updated on September 9, 2024.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
The defects and faults of 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, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
The heart is forever making the head its fool.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
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