Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
False
Gains
Humility
Fronts
Front
Often
Others
Employ
Power
Gain
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity and most men die because they cannot help it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.
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
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
