Quotes By Francois De La Rochefoucauld
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld