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Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

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
Things
Fame
Ones
Attention
Become
Give
Trifling
Giving
Incapable
Great
Generally
Much
Greatness

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We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.
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Hope and fear are inseparable.
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In infants, levity is a prettiness in men a shameful defect but in old age, a monstrous folly.
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Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions.
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Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
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Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.
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As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
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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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Few things are impossible in themselves: application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.
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Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
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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.
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It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
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The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.
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The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.
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The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
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We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]
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Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
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