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
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.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.