Top 1115 Quotes & Sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld - Page 18

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

Love has its name borrowed by a great number of dealings and affairs that are attributed to it--in which it has no greater part than the Doge in what is done at Venice.

The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

That man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.

The most effectual way to be deceived is to believe oneself more cunning than one's neighbors.

Men never desire anything very eagerly which they desire only by the dictates of reason.

Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.

Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.

There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.

Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.

A man is sometimes better off deceived about the one he loves, than undeceived.

There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.

Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.

No one thinks fortune so blind as those she has been least kind to.

The same strength of character which helps a man resist love, helps to make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled minds are always driven about with passions, but never absolutely filled with any.

The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking--but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.

Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

When the soul is ruffled by the remains of one passion, it is more disposed to entertain a new one than when it is entirely curedand at rest from all.

Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it.

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.

Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

Considering how little the beginning or the ceasing to love is in our own power, it is foolish and unreasonable for the lover or his mistress to complain of one another's inconstancy.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

The reason why lovers are never bored together is that they are always talking of themselves.

Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.

A man's wits are better employed in bearing up under the misfortunes that lie upon him at present than in foreseeing those that may come upon him hereafter.

A readiness to believe ill of others, before we have duly examined it, is the effect of laziness and pride. We are eager to find aculprit, and loath to give ourselves the trouble of examining the crime.

Fearlessness is a more than ordinary strength of mind, which raises the soul above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which theprospect of great dangers are used to produce. And by this inward strength it is that heroes preserve themselves in a calm and quiet state, and enjoy a presence of mind and the free use of their reason in the midst of those terrible accidents that amaze and confound other people.

We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.

Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.

Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.

Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.

It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise.

Affected simplicity is a subtle imposture.

Criticism sometimes is really praise, and praise sometimes slander.

Praise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit; the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.

We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face--so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.

When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.

The older a fool is, the worse he is.

There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.

Men frequently do good only to give themselves opportunity of doing ill with impunity.

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.

Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.

The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.

The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.

Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.

Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.