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 most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking--but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.
Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.
Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.
Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.
Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.
Love has its name borrowed by a great number of dealings and affairs that are attributed to it--in which it has no greater part than the Doge in what is done at Venice.
For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.
In love deceit almost always outstrips distrust.
We should not judge a man's merits by his great qualities, but by the use he makes of them.
Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.