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
The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.
Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.
Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.
Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.
Men frequently do good only to give themselves opportunity of doing ill with impunity.
The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.
It is easier for a man to be thought fit for an employment that he has not, than for one he stands already possessed of, and is exercising.
The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
Fortune mends more faults in us than ever reason would be able to do.
We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.
It is often hard to determine whether a clear, open, and honorable proceeding is the result of goodness or of cunning.
The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners.
We often in our misfortunes take that for constancy and patience which is only dejection of mind; we suffer without daring to holdup our heads, just as cowards let themselves be knocked on the head because they have not courage to strike back.