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There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.

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
Men
Mischief
Clever
Enough

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Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
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There are very few things impossible in themselves and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.
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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.
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Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor.
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In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy we bear it without daring to look on it like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.
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He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does so because he would hear it a second time.
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Women know not the whole of their coquetry.
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Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
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When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.
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The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
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Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.
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Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
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On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
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It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
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We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.
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Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
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It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.
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The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.
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None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.
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Nothing is rarer than true good nature they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
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