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We should not judge a man's merits by his great qualities, but by the use he makes of them.
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
Use
Makes
Merits
Great
Qualities
Men
Merit
Judge
Accomplish
Judging
Quality
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.
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Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
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The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.
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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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.
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The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We had better appear what we are, than affect to appear what we are not.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.
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Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
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The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
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The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld