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
Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.
There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.
We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.
Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.
Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous.
Numberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.
It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise.
What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.
The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.
Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.
Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.