Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes
François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac was born on September 15, 1613 in Rue des Petits-Champs, Paris, France. He was a noted French moralist, essayist and author of maxims and memoirs.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld is best known for his maxims. He was part of the literary movement of classicism and was considered an example of the accomplished seventeenth century nobleman. He died on the 17th of March, 1680 in Paris, France.
In this article, we have compiled an array of popular Francois De La Rochefoucauld quotes and sayings.
60 Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes About Life & Love
“True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We would often be ashamed of our best actions if the world only knew the motives behind them.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“He who lives without folly is not as wise as he may think.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Some beautiful things are more impressive when left imperfect than when than when too highly finished” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“It is much easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all of those that follow it.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The desire to be pitied or to be admired often forms the greater part of our confidence.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“However we distrust the sincerity of those whom we talk with, we always believe them more sincere with us than with others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Our minds are lazier than our bodies.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Virtues are lost in self interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be–and thus the world is merely composed of actors.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“All passions make us commit faults, but love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“In love we often doubt what we most believe.”― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Thinkers think and doers do. But until the thinkers do and the doers think, progress will be just another word in the already overburdened vocabulary by sense.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“How can you expect another to keep a secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person’s heart.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We are often more treacherous through weakness than calculation” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The accent of one’s birthplace persists in the mind and heart as much as in speech.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Man often thinks he is in control when he is being controlled, and while his mind is striving in one direction his heart is imperceptibly drawing him in another.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We often forgive those who bore us, but we do not forgive those we bore”.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The intellect is always fooled by the heart.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“In jealousy there is more of self-love than love” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“It is more shameful to distrust one’s friends than to be deceived by them” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it. ” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
20 Maxims Quotes by François de La Rochefoucauld
“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“267.—A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.”― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“437.—We should not judge of a man’s merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“350.—Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because they think themselves more clever than we are.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“201.—He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content with him deceives himself yet more.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“28.—Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable, as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“158.—Flattery is base coin to which only our vanity gives currency.”― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“How comes it that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted to the same person?” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“We do not despise all those with vices, but we do despise all those without a single virtue.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“People would never fall in love if they hadn’t heard love talked about.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote
“If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.” ― François de La Rochefoucauld Quote