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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

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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
Good
Keeps
Emulation
Men
Shame
Imitate
Example
Contagious
Free
Imitation
Nature
Locked
Spawns
Doe
Sets
Malignity
Nothing
Ill
Exceeding
Kind
Deeds
Spawn

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In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.
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Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.
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A wise man should order his interests, and set them all in their proper places. This order is often troubled by greed, which putsus upon pursuing so many things at once that, in eagerness for matters of less consideration, we grasp at trifles, and let go things of greater value.
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One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
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Though confidence is very fine, and makes the future sunny I want no confidence for mine, I'd rather have the money
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We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.
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Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.
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A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others.
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Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.
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For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.
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Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
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Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.
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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.
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There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.
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What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
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The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.
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The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.
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