Top 1115 Quotes & Sayings by Francois de La Rochefoucauld - Page 3
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.
A man's worth has its season, like fruit.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Usually we praise only to be praised.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity.
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.
The mind is always the patsy of the heart.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.
Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
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