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Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
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
Adopt
Distrust
Confidence
Silence
Courses
Course
Men
Safest
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Sincerity is an openness of heart we find it in very few people what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Consolation for unhappiness can often be found in a certain satisfaction we get from looking unhappy.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Humility is often merely feigned submissiveness assumed in order to subject others, an artifice of pride which stoops to conquer, and although pride has a thousand ways of transforming itself it is never so well disguised and able to take people in as when masquerading as humility.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Only the great can afford to have great defects.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
