Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillacla ʁɔʃfuˈko]; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it. Born in Paris on the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-century...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth15 September 1613
CountryFrance
Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes about
Eloquence: saying the proper thing and stopping.
It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.
He is a truly virtuous man who wishes always to be open to the observation of honest men.
People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.
What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.
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.
The only good copies are those which make us see the absurdity of bad originals.
A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.
It is as easy to unknowingly deceive yourself as it is to deceive others.
We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.
There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill.
Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor.
Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.