Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today.
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.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.
Το know how to profit by good advice, requires nearly as much ability as to know how to act for one'self.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.
To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.
Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.
We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage often brings greater results than actual brilliance
The moderation of fortunate people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their tempers.
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.
Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.
Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design.
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.
We should not judge a man's merits by his great qualities, but by the use he makes of them.
Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.