François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

We always like those who admire us.

What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear.

It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability.

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

We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.

The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.

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

In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful.

Only great men have great faults.

Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

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

No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.

It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it ridiculous to show it to others.

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.

Numberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.

It is not enough that we should succeed, but our friends must fail as well.

When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.

If one judges love by the majority of its effects, it is more like hatred than like friendship.

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.

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

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

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.

Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.

Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.

It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.

We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity.

Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.

It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.

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.

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

Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.

The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.

All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.

The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness of age.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.

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.

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

We judge so superficially of things, that common words and actions spoke and done in an agreeable manner, with some knowledge of what passes in the world, often succeed beyond the greatest ability.

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.

In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

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.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much.

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.

Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.