Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes
A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being. A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.
The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.
We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.
We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.
Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous.
The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
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.
If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill.
The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.
Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.
There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.
The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
What men call friendship is no more than a partnership a mutual care of interests an exchange of favors - in a word it is a sort of traffic in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
If we have not peace within ourselves it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
Though men pride themselves on their great actions often they are not the result of any great design but of chance.
Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like not from possessing what others like.
Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of parts even that of disinterestedness.
In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
To establish oneself in the world one has to do all one can to appear established.
It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it is ridiculous to show it to others.
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said and that only.
I always say to myself what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.