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A man is ridiculous less through the characteristics he has than through those he affects to have.
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
Characteristics
Ridiculous
Less
Men
Affects
More quotes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Happy people rarely correct their faults they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are some bad qualities which make great talents.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
