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Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
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.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
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.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
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.
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.
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.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
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.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
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.
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Taste may change, but inclination never.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
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.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
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.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
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.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.