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We give advice, we do not inspire conduct.
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
Conduct
Inspire
Advice
Inspiration
Give
Giving
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
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
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is often hard to determine whether a clear, open, and honorable proceeding is the result of goodness or of cunning.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The wind which snuffs the candle fans the fire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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
