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Eloquence: saying the proper thing and stopping.

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
Proper
Speech
Saying
Thing
Eloquence
Stopping

More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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The rust of business is sometimes polished off in a camp but never in a court.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Nothing should lessen our satisfaction with ourselves as much as when we notice that we disapprove of something at one time that we approve of at another time.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined thoughts.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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There are few people more convinced of their own genius than those who complain of how stupid they are.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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