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Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.

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
Men
Deception
Highly
Inconsolable
Enemies
Deceptions
Satisfied
Treachery
Enemy
Concerning
Friends
Selves
Often
Betrayed
Self
Deceived

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Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor.
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Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
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One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.
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The passions often engender their contraries.
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Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
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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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It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.
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The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
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True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.
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A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
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The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
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The greatest of all gifts is the power to estimate things at their true worth
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Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood age retains its tastes by habit.
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All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.
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Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.
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Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.
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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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The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.
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We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
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