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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.

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
Right
Ruins
Things
Merit
Time
Manners
Whose
Stupid
Saying
Change
Ruin
Persons
Consists

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Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.
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No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
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Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
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To establish ourselves in the world, we have to do all we can to appear established. To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.
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Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.
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Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
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Nothing should lessen our satisfaction with ourselves as much as when we notice that we disapprove of something at one time that we approve of at another time.
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Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.
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Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
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We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.
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Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
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Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.
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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.
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We love much better those who endeavor to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For imitation is a sign of esteem, but competition of envy.
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The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
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There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.
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Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
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Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance.
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Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
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Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.
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