François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

“It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.”

“We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.”

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

“Reconciliation with our enemies is simply a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, or the fear of some unlucky thing from occurring.”

“Not to love is in love an infallible means of being loved.”

“A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.”

“Most women lament not the death of their lovers so much out of real affection for them, as because they would appear worthy of love.”

“Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.”

“One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.”

“We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.”

“The more we love, the nearer we are to hate.”

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

“The extreme pleasure we take in speaking of ourselves should make us apprehensive that it gives hardly any to those who listen to us.”

“Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.”

“A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon.”

“None but the contemptible are apprehensive of contempt.”

“There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.”

“Madmen and fools see everything through the medium of humor.”

“Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.”

“He is a truly virtuous man who wishes always to be open to the observation of honest men.”

“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.”

“Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.”

“To establish yourself in the world a person must do all they can to appear already established.”

“Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.”

“The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners.”