François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

We forgive so long as we love.

Extreme boredom provides its own antidote.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

A weakling is incapable of sincerity.

The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans t...

87.—Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. [A maxim, adds Aimé Ma...

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and th...

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great o...

How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship.

It is with true love as with ghosts. Every one talks of it but few have seen it.

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.

Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

We are often more treacherous through weakness than calculation

In jealousy there is more of self-love than love

He who lives without folly is not as wise as he may think.

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

It is much easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all of those that follow it.

We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodn...

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad.

True love is like ghosts which many believe in, but few have seen.

Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride th...

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have ha...

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in ...

The virtues and the vices are all put in motion by interest.

Nothing is so infectious as example.

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of parts even that of disinterestedness.

What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones or the pleasure o...

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every...

The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that decei...

It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can...

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

If we have not peace within ourselves it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguish...

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage and ...

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to c...

If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acqu...

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either cease...

Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assista...

The intellect is always fooled by the heart.

There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.

Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we li...

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those t...

We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire.

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to t...

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking...

A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.

True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said and that only.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and f...

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.

If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly t...

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acqu...

To establish oneself in the world one has to do all one can to appear established.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

Though men pride themselves on their great actions often they are not the result of any great desig...

Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an i...