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We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced 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
Feel
Produced
Feels
Motive
World
Ashamed
Actions
Often
Inspirational
Action
Best
Motives
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.
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There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.
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Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
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When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
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We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.
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The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.
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A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
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Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour.
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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.
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The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long.
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Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.
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Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.
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Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it merely aims at keeping something that belongs to us or we think belongsto us, whereas envy is a frenzy that cannot bear anything that belongs to others.
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A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.
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The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.
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The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.
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Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.
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Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
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