Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotations | Page 5

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

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

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.

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.

As long as we love, we can forgive.

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.

True friendship destroys envy, and true love destroys coquetterie.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

The reason why most women have so little sense of friendship is that this is but a cold and flat passion to those that have felt that of love.

The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.

Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.

When the philosophers despised riches, it was because they had a mind to vindicate their own merit, and take revenge upon the injustice of fortune by vilifying those enjoyments which she had not given them.

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.

Things often offer themselves to our mind in a more finished form in the very first thought, than we might have made them by muchart and study.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire.

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

It is necessary, in order to know things well, to know the particulars of them; and these, being infinite, make our knowledge eversuperficial and imperfect.

Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases.

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

Women can more easily conquer their passion than their coquetterie.

True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.

He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken.

Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.

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

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

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

Criticism sometimes is really praise, and praise sometimes slander.

Praise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit; the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.

Pride has a greater share than goodness in the reproofs we give other people for their faults; and we chide them not so much to make them mend those faults as to make them believe that we ourselves are without fault.

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.

We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face--so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.

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.

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.

When the soul is ruffled by the remains of one passion, it is more disposed to entertain a new one than when it is entirely curedand at rest from all.

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.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

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.

The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.

The same strength of character which helps a man resist love, helps to make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled minds are always driven about with passions, but never absolutely filled with any.

There are people who would never have been in love, had they never heard love spoken of.

There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.

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.

Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.

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

A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly.

Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.

Considering how little the beginning or the ceasing to love is in our own power, it is foolish and unreasonable for the lover or his mistress to complain of one another's inconstancy.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.

In love deceit almost always outstrips distrust.

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

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

Love has its name borrowed by a great number of dealings and affairs that are attributed to it--in which it has no greater part than the Doge in what is done at Venice.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up.

Some men are so full of themselves that when they fall in love, they amuse themselves rather with their own passion than with theperson they love.

We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.

It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.

Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunningsort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others.

Every one complains of a poor memory, no one of a weak judgment.

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.

The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.

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.

There are some people upon whom their very faults and failings sit gracefully; and there are others whose very excellencies and accomplishments do not become them.

Eloquence resides as much in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the expression of the face, as in the choice of words.

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.

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

Bravery in simple soldiers is a dangerous trade, to which they have bound themselves to get their livelihood.

We easily forget our faults when no one knows them but 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.

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 effectual way to be deceived is to believe oneself more cunning than one's neighbors.

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.

Fearlessness is a more than ordinary strength of mind, which raises the soul above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which theprospect of great dangers are used to produce. And by this inward strength it is that heroes preserve themselves in a calm and quiet state, and enjoy a presence of mind and the free use of their reason in the midst of those terrible accidents that amaze and confound other people.

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.

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

Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.

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.

What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.

There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.