Top 1115 Quotes & Sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld - Page 14

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.

It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability.

As love increases, prudence diminishes.

There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.

It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.

Silence is the best tactic for he who distrusts himself.

Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.

Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.

The vivacity that augments with years is not far from folly.

We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

To think to be wise alone is a very great folly.

Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.

A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.

The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.

Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.

Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.

There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.

Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer Him His sacrifices.

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.

For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.

There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.

Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and had ones through a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.

A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

There are follies as catching as contagious disorders.

There is something to be said for jealousy, because it only designs the preservation of some good which we either have or think wehave a right to. But envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them.

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.

Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw upon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.

We should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.

Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts

Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware.

Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.

Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions.

Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.

Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

Our wisdom is no less at fortune's mercy than our wealth.

In infants, levity is a prettiness; in men a shameful defect; but in old age, a monstrous folly.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.

Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.

The desire to be thought clever often prevents a man from becoming so.

That which occasions so many mistakes in the computations of men, when they expect return for favors, is that the giver's pride and the receiver's cannot agree upon the value of the kindness done.