Francois de La Rochefoucauld Ss Quotations

The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.

People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.

Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.

It is pointless for a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

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.

Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after so many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after the least we miss the greatest.

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.

To be a great man it is necessary to know how to profit by the whole of our good fortune.

We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.

The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.

We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

However we may conceal our passions under the veil ... there is always some place where they peep out.

We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.

More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.

It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.

L'absence diminue les mediocres passions, et augmente les grandes,comme le vent eteint les bougies, et allume le feu. Absence diminishes commonplace passions, and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

Strength and weakness of mind are misnomers; they are really nothing but the good or bad health of our bodily organs.

All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.

Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity.

The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

We often pride ourselves on even the most criminal passions, but envy is a timid and shamefaced passion we never dare to acknowledge.

The duration of our passions is no more dependent on ourselves than the duration of our lives.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.

Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully

It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.

Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.

What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.

Nothing is rarer than real goodness.

In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful.

No matter how much care we put into hiding our passions under the appearances of devotion and honor, they can always be seen to peer out through these covers.

Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts

We should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.

A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.

Weak people cannot be sincere.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.

Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.

Gratitude is a useless word. You will find it in a dictionary but not in life.

One is never as happy or as unhappy as one thinks.

There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.

Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.

The happiness and unhappiness of men depends as much on their ethics as on fortune.

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others.

Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined thoughts.

We pardon as long as we love.

The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires.....

We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things.

If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.

We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.

Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.

The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones.

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.

Of all our faults, the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.

Thinkers think and doers do. But until the thinkers do and the doers think, progress will be just another word in the already overburdened vocabulary by sense.

If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves.

Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.

We pardon to the extent that we love.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.