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Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
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
Fool
Passion
Often
Sometimes
Men
Renders
Clever
Foolish
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.
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Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.
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The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.
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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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Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.
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Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The passions often engender their contraries.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Prudence and love are inconsistent in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity and most men die because they cannot help it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Raillery is more insupportable than wrong because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are two sorts of constancy in love one arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Humility is the worst form of conceit.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
