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What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.
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
Cleverer
Bitter
Loss
Makes
Think
Thinking
People
Outwit
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In love we often doubt what we most believe.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves it is the quality which wins us deference of others more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
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
However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
