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Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.

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
Merit
Esteem
Gains
Star
Public
Stars
Popularity
Virtuous

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Nothing is rarer than true good nature they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
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What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
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In infants, levity is a prettiness in men a shameful defect but in old age, a monstrous folly.
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All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.
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Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.
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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.
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We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.
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What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
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That man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.
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It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
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Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes.
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Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
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We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
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The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.
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Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.
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