QuotesTemple
Reflecting on Human Nature
Francois de La Rochefoucauld was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. He is part of the literary movement of classicism and is best known for his 'Maximes'.
Author | French
Born: 1613-09-15 in Paris, France
Died: March 17, 1680 in Paris, France
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Taste may change, but inclination never.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is so contagious as example and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We pardon to the extent that we love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Many men are contemptuous of riches few can give them away.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld