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There are certain people fated to be fools they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.
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
Certain
Follies
Even
Fools
People
Folly
Commit
Fortune
Choice
Fool
Fated
Choices
Constrained
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We give advice, we do not inspire conduct.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
