Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes
As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.
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.
Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.
We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire.
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.
Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
That man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.
Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.
The reason why lovers are never bored together is that they are always talking of themselves.
Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.
Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.
Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.
Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.
The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.
The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.
It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise.
Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.
Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.