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Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.

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
Fortune
Lies
Wisdom
Lying
Much
Possessions
Possession
Mercy

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The happiness and unhappiness of men depends as much on their ethics as on fortune.
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The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
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Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
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A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.
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Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
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Great names abase, instead of elevating, those who do not know how to bear them.
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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.
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Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases.
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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.
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Old people are fond of giving good advice it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example.
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The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.
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Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
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We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.
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Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
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Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up.
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What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
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Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
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Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
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Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.
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Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.
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