Quotes By Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us.

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

We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.

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.

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.

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

We pardon to the extent that we love.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.

In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

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

We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.

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

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

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