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Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.
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
Despicable
Despised
Contempt
Fear
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.
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Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
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Men are not only prone to forget benefits they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.
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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.
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Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are very few things impossible in themselves and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.
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The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.
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One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
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Men never desire anything very eagerly which they desire only by the dictates of reason.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Youth is a perpetual intoxication it is a fever of the mind.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.
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Youth is a continual intoxication it is the fever of reason.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld