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Things often offer themselves to our mind in a more finished form in the very first thought, than we might have made them by muchart and study.

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
Ideas
Spontaneity
Might
Offer
Firsts
Finished
First
Offers
Made
Study
Mind
Often
Things
Form
Thought

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The moderation of fortunate people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their tempers.
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A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
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Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
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To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself
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In the human heart new passions are forever being born the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
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Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
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Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.
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Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.
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Esteem never makes ingrates.
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None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.
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Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.
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Women know not the whole of their coquetry.
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When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
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There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.
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Fortune and humor govern the world.
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Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.
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If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.
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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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Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.
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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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