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He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks. [Fr., Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.]
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
Thinks
Wise
Lives
Without
Thinking
Sans
Committing
Sage
Folly
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
One may outwit another, but not all the others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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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A man is ridiculous less through the characteristics he has than through those he affects to have.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.
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 often hard to determine whether a clear, open, and honorable proceeding is the result of goodness or of cunning.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
How can we be answerable for what we shall want in the future, since we have no clear idea of what we want now?
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases.
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.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The passions often engender their contraries.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Fortune never seems so blind to any as to those on whom she bestows no favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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
