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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

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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
Without
Persuade
Always
Eloquent
Men
Simplest
Passions
Rules
Orators
Passion
Oratory
Natural
Persuasive
Art
Infallible

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Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
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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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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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We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.
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Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.
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Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
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There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
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Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
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It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.
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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.
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What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.
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What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
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It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.
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Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.
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Friendship is insipid to those who have experienced love.
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Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
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We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.
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