La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

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.

In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.

It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.

Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall.

Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.

No matter how brilliant an action, it should not be considered great unless it was the result of a great motive.

Renewed friendships require more care than those that have never been broken.

A clever man should handle his interests so that each will fall in suitable order of their value.

The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.

To boast that one never flirts is actually a kind of flirtation.

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.

When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.

There are two sorts of constancy in love one arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant.

One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun.

There are few good women who do not tire of their role.

You are never so easily fooled as when trying to fool someone else.

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.

We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

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

Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.

The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.

Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.

For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.

Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.

To think to be wise alone is a very great folly.

The desire to be thought clever often prevents a man from becoming so.

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.

Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw upon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.

Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.

The applause we give those who are new to society often proceeds from a secret envying of those already established.

A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.

We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.

We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.

Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.

In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.

We forgive just so long as we love.

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.

Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.