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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Age: 66 †
Born: 1613
Born: September 15
Died: 1680
Died: March 17
Memoirist
Military Personnel
Writer
Paris
France
François VI
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Prince de Marcillac
François
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Thought
Find
Long
People
Ungrateful
Seldom
Serve

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However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
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We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
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What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.
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As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
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To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
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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.
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Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
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Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
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More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.
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No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.
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Were we faultless, we would not derive such satisfaction from remarking the faults of others.
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Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.
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It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
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There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.
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To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
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There are few people who would not be ashamed of being loved when they love no longer.
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We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.
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The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
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What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
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A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.
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