François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

Comment prétendons-nous qu’un autre garde notre secret si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-mêmes?

What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.

Tel homme est ingrat, qui est moins coupable de son ingratitude que celui qui lui a fait du bien.

There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the majority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They are changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should imitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are not.

"L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.

"Hypocrisy is the respect that vice pays to virtue.

La constancia de los sabios no es otra cosa que el arte de reprimir su agitación dentro de sí mismos.

Hope and fear are inseparable; and there is no fear without hope, or hope without fear.

It seems that nature has at man’s birth fixed the bounds of his virtues and vices.

Il est quelquefois agréable à un mari d'avoir une femme jalouse; il entend toujours parler de ce qu'il aime.

Very clever men pretend all their lives to condemn trickery so that, at a crucial moment and for a large stake, they may indulge in it.

Luxury and excessive refinements are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal

Il n'y a qu'une sorte d'amour, mais il y en a mille différentes copies.

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.