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There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
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
Turns
Accidents
Able
Clever
People
Foolish
None
Advantage
Disadvantage
Lucky
Unlucky
Events
Disadvantages
Turn
Reap
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are few people more convinced of their own genius than those who complain of how stupid they are.
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
To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are few people who would not be ashamed of being loved when they love no longer.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
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
We often boast that we are never bored but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
