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
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.
The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.