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
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
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.
We should not be much concerned about faults we have the courage to own.
The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor.
Most women lament not the death of their lovers so much out of real affection for them, as because they would appear worthy of love.
Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.
Humility is often merely feigned submissiveness assumed in order to subject others, an artifice of pride which stoops to conquer, and although pride has a thousand ways of transforming itself it is never so well disguised and able to take people in as when masquerading as humility.
Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.
There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.
There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.
It is pointless for a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.