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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
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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
Passions
Leads
Contrary
Prodigality
Weakness
Contraries
Produce
Obstinate
Passion
Timidity
Often
Avarice
Sometimes
Daring
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.
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Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.
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In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful.
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To establish ourselves in the world, we have to do all we can to appear established. To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.
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Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.
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A readiness to believe ill of others, before we have duly examined it, is the effect of laziness and pride. We are eager to find aculprit, and loath to give ourselves the trouble of examining the crime.
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Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it.
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The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.
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One kind of flirtation is to boast we never flirt.
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It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
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One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
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What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.
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We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
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It is far better to be deceived than undeceived by those whom we tenderly love.
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Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.
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There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.
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When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
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In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.
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Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.
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As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.
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