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There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable 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
Many
Great
Men
Serviceable
Valued
Recommend
Vices
Society
Nothing
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
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Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
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It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.
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The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
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It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
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We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
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We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
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Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Weak people cannot be sincere.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld