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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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We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.
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There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.
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To be a great man it is necessary to know how to profit by the whole of our good fortune.
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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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No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.
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It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.
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There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.
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The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.
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No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
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A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
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It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
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There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
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As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
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Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.
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Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope.
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Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.
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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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There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.
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Some reproaches praise some praises reproach.
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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.
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