François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.

Nothing prevents us being natural so much as the desire to appear so.

"87. — Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other.

[A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived." — 2 TIM. iii. 13.]"

"433. — The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy. ["Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae." — Cicero In Marc Ant.]"

Les défauts de l'âme sont comme les blessures du corps: quelque soin qu'on prenne de les guérir, la cicatrice paraît toujours, et elles sont à tout moment en danger de se rouvrir.

The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that each thinks more of what he desires to say, than of what the others say, and that we make bad listeners when we want to speak.

313. — How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

We should only be astonished at still being able to be astonished.

It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really ceased to love.

276. — Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.

We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.

Si nous résistons à nos passions, c'est plus par leur faiblesse que par notre force.

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.

95. — The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it.