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Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

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
Self
Proportion
Feel
Judge
Feels
Satisfaction
Diminishes
Good
Towards
Increases
Love
Increase
Diminish
Judging
Qualities
Quality
Merit
Friends
Manner

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Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.
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He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
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Our desires always disappoint us for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]
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The strongest symptom of wisdom in man is his being sensible of his own follies.
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The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.
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Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.
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Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
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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.]
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Reconciliation with our enemies is simply a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, or the fear of some unlucky thing from occurring.
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A man often believes himself leader when he is led as his mind endeavors to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.
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There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.
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Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
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Nature creates ability luck provides it with opportunity.
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It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
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If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.
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Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.
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The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.
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It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.
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Happy people rarely correct their faults they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.
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Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
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