Top 1115 Quotes & Sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld - Page 17

All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.

There are some bad qualities which make great talents.

The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.

Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind.

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.

We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

There are several remedies which will cure love, but there are no infallible ones.

The extreme pleasure we take in speaking of ourselves should make us apprehensive that it gives hardly any to those who listen to us.

There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

As long as we love, we can forgive.

It is necessary, in order to know things well, to know the particulars of them; and these, being infinite, make our knowledge eversuperficial and imperfect.

Tastes in young people are changed by natural impetuosity, and in the aged are preserved by habit.

Great men should not have great faults.

Women can more easily conquer their passion than their coquetterie.

However much we may distrust men's sincerity, we always believe they speak to us more sincerely than to others.

There is merit without rank, but there is no rank without some merit.

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.

The duration of our passions is no more dependent on ourselves than the duration of our lives.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases.

The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise.

Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.

Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other.

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

One honor won is a surety for more.

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.

We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire.

We often pride ourselves on even the most criminal passions, but envy is a timid and shamefaced passion we never dare to acknowledge.

Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour.

The only security is courage.

Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.

Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.

Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.

Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.

Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.

Sometimes we think we dislike flattery, but it is only the way it is done that we dislike.

When the philosophers despised riches, it was because they had a mind to vindicate their own merit, and take revenge upon the injustice of fortune by vilifying those enjoyments which she had not given them.

There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken.