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We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.
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
Defects
Dare
Criticism
Praise
Use
Often
Rebound
Way
Praised
Make
Reveals
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
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 fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw upon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All the passions make us commit faults love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
