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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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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
Always
Vanity
Virtue
Almost
Fear
Clemency
Often
Indolence
Three
Proceeds
Sometimes
Mixture
Make
Mixtures

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The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.
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Affected simplicity is a subtle imposture.
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Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
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Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
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Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
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The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.
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As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.
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It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.
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One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.
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Humility is the worst form of conceit.
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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.
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No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
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Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.
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There are many predicaments in life that one must be a bit crazy to escape from.
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It is as easy to unknowingly deceive yourself as it is to deceive others.
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Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunningsort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others.
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Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
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