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 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.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
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.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.