Writer · French · 1613 – 1680 · 243 quotes
We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Writer · French · 1613 – 1680
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.
It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
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.
The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
