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
That conduct often seems ridiculous the secret reasons of which are wise and solid.
The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.
Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love.
Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.
Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.
What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.
Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.
As we grow older we grow both more foolish and wiser at the same time.
Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.
Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.
It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.
The passions often engender their contraries.