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A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

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
Gratitude
Kindness
Secret
Desire
Nothing
Kindnesses
Many
Hereafter
Great
Hook
Men
Valuable

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There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.
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All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.
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Bravery in simple soldiers is a dangerous trade, to which they have bound themselves to get their livelihood.
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The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.
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The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.
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Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
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Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.
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The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
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One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.
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There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
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Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.
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It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.
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It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.
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Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.
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The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.
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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.
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We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.
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Our hopes, often though they deceive us, lead us pleasantly along the path of life.
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The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
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