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Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.

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
Good
Debt
Like
Gratitude
People
Pay
Maintains
Trust
Traders
Faith
Debts
Often
Discharge
May
Readily
Find
Commerce

More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly.
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Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
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Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions.
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Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
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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.]
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We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face--so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.
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Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love.
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The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
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Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.
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Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
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Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.
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The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride it seems to nourish and augment it it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.
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There are reproaches which praise, and praises which defame.
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Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
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Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
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Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.
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We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
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It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it ridiculous to show it to others.
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Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
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We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which we know not the rules, and a secret conformity of the features to each other, as also to the air and complexion of the person.
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