Francois de La Rochefoucauld Self Quotations

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.

It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

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.

The constancy of the wise is only the art of keeping disquietude to one's self.

Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it.

Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.

Jealousy is not love, but self-love.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

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

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.

We do not like to praise, and seldom praise anyone without self-interest.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.

The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves.

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.

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.

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.

Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.

Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.

Jealousy is always born with love, but does not die with it. In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love to another.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.

It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.

We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.

The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.

Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.

It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.

The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.