Writer · French · 1613 – 1680 · 243 quotes
Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Writer · French · 1613 – 1680
To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
The mind is always the patsy of the heart.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
A man's worth has its season, like fruit.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us.
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
The heart is forever making the head its fool.
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.
