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The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
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
Name
Virtue
Names
Interest
Self
Real
Serviceable
Pretense
Vices
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.
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Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.
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Love is one and the same in the original but there are a thousand different copies of it.
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The esteem of good men is the reward of our worth, but the reputation of the world in general is the gift of our fate.
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To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself
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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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Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.
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Jealousy is not love, but self-love.
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However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
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The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.
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The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.
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The strongest symptom of wisdom in man is his being sensible of his own follies.
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It is pointless for a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.
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No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.
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There are reproaches which praise, and praises which defame.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Praise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.
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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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That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.
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Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
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Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.
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