A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Quote Topics

Appear Changes Character Easily Firmness General Gentle Gentleness Only Persons Real Those Weak Weak Character Which

Quote Author

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
French - Writer
September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680

Only strong natures can really be sweet ones; those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Both gentleness and meekness are born of power, not weakness. There is a pseudo-gentlene ss that is effeminate, and there is a pseudo-meekness that is cowardly. But a Christian is to be gentle and meek because those are Godlike virtues... We should never be afraid, therefore, that the gentleness of the Spirit means weakness of character. It takes strength, God's strength, to be truly gentle.

Jerry Bridges

The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.

Sydney J. Harris

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

Leo Buscaglia

I choose gentleness... Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.

Max Lucado

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

Leo Rosten

The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.

Will Durant

You know the words from the Bible: 'Build not on sand, but on rock....' Tyrant leaders respect only firmness...and laugh at persons who give in to them.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Gentleness is a divine trait: nothing is so divine as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength.

Ralph Washington Sockman

I have my own peculiar yardstick for measuring a man: Does he have the courage to cry in a moment of grief? Does he have the compassion not to hunt an animal? In his relationship with a woman, is he gentle? Real manliness is nurtured in kindness and gentleness, which I associate with intelligence, comprehension, tolerance, justice, education, and high morality. If only men realized how easy it is to open a woman's heart with kindness, and how many women close their hearts to the assaults of the Don Juans.

Sophia Loren

I believe that every character I create is in their own film, that happens to overlap with the main film. There are complete and real characters, even though we only spend only a little time with them. In the approach to what those entities are, that always appeals to an actor. What are they, since they are going to embody this character?

Ana Lily Amirpour

Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even en elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness.

Zoroaster

Amid all the revolutions of the globe, the economy of Nature has been uniform, ... and her laws are the only things that have resisted the general movement. The rivers and the rocks, the seas and the continents, have been changed in all their parts; but the laws which direct those changes, and the rules to which they are subject, have remained invariably the same.

John Playfair

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one; it comes of a weak craving for those blandishments of the world which are easily to be had for money, and which, when obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a harlot's love is worse than none.

Henry Taylor

The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.