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 never so generous as when giving advice.
We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company.
We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.
Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.
Only great men have great faults.
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
We bear, all of us, the misfortunes of other people with heroic constancy.
Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.
A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others.
One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.
A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.
Few know how to be old.
In infants, levity is a prettiness; in men a shameful defect; but in old age, a monstrous folly.
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by their big, fancy names.