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We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.

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
Fortunate
Fortune
Either
Imagination
Imagine
Never

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A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.
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Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
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Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.
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It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.
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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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Hope and fear are inseparable.
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When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
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A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon.
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Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
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Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.
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Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.
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There are people who would never have been in love, had they never heard love spoken of.
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A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
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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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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.
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The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others.
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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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There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
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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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Fortune mends more faults in us than ever reason would be able to do.
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