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It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.

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
Traits
Taste
Common
Change
Character
Uncommon
Tastes

More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.
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We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
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In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.
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Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
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The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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History never embraces more than a small part of reality
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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
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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
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Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Love has its name borrowed by a great number of dealings and affairs that are attributed to it--in which it has no greater part than the Doge in what is done at Venice.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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