Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotations | Page 4

Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.

It is given to few persons to keep this secret well. Those who lay down rules too often break them, and the safest we are able to give is to listen much, to speak little, and to say nothing that that will ever give ground or regret.

All women seem by nature to be coquettes.

Women find it far more difficult to overcome their inclination to coquetry than to overcome their love.

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

Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.

The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others.

Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.

In love the deceit generally outstrips the distrust.

We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

Esteem never makes ingrates.

Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and had ones through a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.

There are follies as catching as contagious disorders.

It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination.

It is far better to be deceived than undeceived by those whom we tenderly love.

Fancy sets the value on the gifts of fortune.

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.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie; maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]

There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.

He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks. [Fr., Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.]

A fool has not material enough to be good. [Fr., Un sot n'a pas assez d'etoffe pour etre bon.]

The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.

Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance.

Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate; but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to cover the defects of the mind.

Hatred is stronger than friendship.

Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over philosophy.

Indolence, languid as it is, often masters both passions and virtues.

We have more indolence in the mind than in the body.

The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason.

Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.

As love increases, prudence diminishes.

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

Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise.

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

Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

Even women are perfect at the outset.

There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

Raillery is more insupportable than wrong; because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.

It is praiseworthy even to attempt a great action.

Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.

Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.

Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful-and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have.

The qualities we have do not make us so ridiculous as those which we affect to have. [Fr., On n'est jamais si ridicule par les qualites que l'on a que par celles que l'on affecte d'avoir.]

There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.

Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other.

Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.

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

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.

The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.

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

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.

Great men should not have great faults.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.

One honor won is a surety for more.

Jealousy is not love, but self-love.

There are several remedies which will cure love, but there are no infallible ones.

Many young persons believe themselves natural when they are only impolite and coarse.

A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

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.

Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.

There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

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.

Simplicity is a delicate imposition.

It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.

The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.

We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.

Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.

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.

The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.

It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

The vivacity that augments with years is not far from folly.

We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.

The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them.

Our wisdom is no less at fortune's mercy than our wealth.

Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.

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

A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.

A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it.

Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.

Nothing is more ridiculous in old people that were once good-looking, than to forget that they are not so still.

Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.

To think to be wise alone is a very great folly.