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
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.
There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.
We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.
Hope is the last thing that dies in man; and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end.
There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.
The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.
Chance corrects us of many faults that reason would not know how to correct.
Numberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.
Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others.