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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

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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
Nothing
Praise
Good
Weakness
None
Atheism
Deserve
Fear
Indolence
Spirit
Rage
Part
Goodness

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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.
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What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
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In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.
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When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
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Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.
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There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
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Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.
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We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
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We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.
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True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
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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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We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.
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Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
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We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.
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When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.
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Hope is the last thing that dies in man and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end.
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Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
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If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.
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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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