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Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.
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
Behind
Wise
Lying
Weighty
Thought
Motives
Many
Motive
Acts
Ridiculous
Behinds
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Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.
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There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
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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.
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Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
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We sometimes differ more widely from ourselves than we do from others.
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The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.
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Envy is more incapable of reconciliation than hatred is.
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We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.
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Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.
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There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.
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The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
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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.
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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 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.
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To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
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We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.
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Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.
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On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.
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It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability.
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