A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
A man's worth has its season, like fruit.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Self-love is the greatest flatterer in the world.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
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.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We always get bored with those whom we bore.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We pardon to the extent that we love.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to render them service.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quote
