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When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our 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
Desert
Vices
Age
Deserting
Flatter

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Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.
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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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Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
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The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
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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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Nothing is rarer than true good nature they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
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The great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.
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We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.
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One forgives to the degree that one loves.
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The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.
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Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
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Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.
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Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.
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It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.
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One may outwit another, but not all the others.
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Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.
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To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
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There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.
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Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
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There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
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