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It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability.
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
Conceal
Degree
Requires
Degrees
Small
Ability
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One may outwit another, but not all the others.
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
As we grow older we grow both more foolish and wiser at the same time.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All the passions make us commit faults love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Things often offer themselves to our mind in a more finished form in the very first thought, than we might have made them by muchart and study.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.
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
We speak little if not egged on by vanity.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.
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 woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time - unless she happens to take a second.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One should treat one's fate as one does one's health enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poor, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are certain people fated to be fools they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Many young persons believe themselves natural when they are only impolite and coarse.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
