Francois de La Rochefoucauld Men Quotations

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.

There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.

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.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

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.

When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.

When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.

Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.

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.

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.

A man's worth has its season, like fruit.

A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

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.

The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.

The dullness of certain people is sometimes a sufficient security against the attack of an artful man.

Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.

Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.

A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.

Few men know all the ill they do.

To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.

Men sometimes think they hate flattery, but they hate only the manner of flattering.

A fool has not stuff enough to make a good man.

Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.

What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.

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.

To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.

Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised.

The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

The generality of men have, like plants, latent properties, which chance brings to light.

For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.

It is more difficult for a man to be faithful to his mistress when he is favored than when he is ill treated by her.

In infants, levity is a prettiness; in men a shameful defect; but in old age, a monstrous folly.

The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.

Great men should not have great faults.

Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.

A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

The desire to be thought clever often prevents a man from becoming so.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

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

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.

Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.

A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another.

Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.

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

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 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.

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

A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly.

No man can love a second time the person whom he has once truly ceased to love.

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.

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

The esteem of good men is the reward of our worth, but the reputation of the world in general is the gift of our fate.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All men are equally proud. The only difference is that not all take the same methods of showing it.

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.

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

None but great men are capable of having great flaws.

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

It is easier for a man to be thought fit for an employment that he has not, than for one he stands already possessed of, and is exercising.

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

The moderation of men in the most exalted fortunes is a desire to be thought above those things that have raised them so high.

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.

Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

A wise man should order his interests, and set them all in their proper places. This order is often troubled by greed, which putsus upon pursuing so many things at once that, in eagerness for matters of less consideration, we grasp at trifles, and let go things of greater value.

A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.

It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.

A man is ridiculous less through the characteristics he has than through those he affects to have.

We exaggerate the glory of some men in order to detract from that of others.

Most men, like plants, possess hidden qualities which chance discovers.

The man whom no one pleases is much more unhappy than the man who pleases no one.

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever