Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.

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

We always love those who admire us but we do not always love those whom we admire.

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

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

We say little when vanity does not make us speak.

Some people displease with merit and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

It is easier to know men in general than men in particular.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can, and when once you take hope and fear away you take from it its very life and being.

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

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

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

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

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

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

We should often blush for our very best actions if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.

We always get bored with those whom we bore.

Old people love to give good advice, it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor number and excess.

The defects of the mind like those of the face grow worse with age.

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head and people in them acting. People you know yet can't quite name.

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

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

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

Self-interest makes some people blind and others sharp-sighted.

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.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body, after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.

It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

When we disclaim praise it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.

The first lover is kept a long while when no offer is made of a second.

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.

The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.

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

We may seem great in an employment below our worth but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

On neither the sun nor death can a man look fixedly.

It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.

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.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

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

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

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

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

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

It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold than of the office which one fills.

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.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

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

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

Many men are contemptuous of riches, few can give them away.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

Nothing is so contagious as example, and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.

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

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart as it does in his speech.

We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.

Love often leads on to ambition but seldom does one return from ambition to love.

There are various sorts of curiosity, one is from interest which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us, and the other from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.

Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

Politeness is a desire to be treated politely and to be esteemed polite oneself.

Men often pass from love to ambition but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

The intellect is always fooled by the heart.

We promise in proportion to our hopes and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

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

Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.

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.

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.

The heart is forever making the head its fool.

We do not praise others ordinarily but in order to be praised ourselves.

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

If we did not flatter ourselves the flattery of others could never harm us.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.

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.

The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper owing to the calm of their good fortune.

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

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

People's personalities like buildings have various facades some pleasant to view some not.

It is with true love as it is with ghosts, everyone talks about it but few have seen it.

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?

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

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

Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.

In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.

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.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

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

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.

A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.

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

Whatever good things people say of us they tell us nothing new.

The one thing people are the most liberal with is their advice.

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

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.

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.

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.

In friendship as well as love ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

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

They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.

The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.