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To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
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
Ability
Great
Hiding
Skill
Hide
Skills
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.
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Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
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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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Reconciliation with our enemies is simply a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, or the fear of some unlucky thing from occurring.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
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Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In the human heart new passions are forever being born the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
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The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
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It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the soul is to the body which it animates.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
