Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

102. “Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

103. “The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

104. “Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

105. “In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

106. “What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

107. “Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

108. “Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

109. “Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

110. “A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

111. “There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

112. “We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

113. “Misers mistake gold for their good; whereas ’tis only a means of attaining it.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

114. “The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

115. “The wind which snuffs the candle fans the fire.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

116. “Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

117. “Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

118. “It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

119. “All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

120. “If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

121. “Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations; others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

122. “Renewed friendships require more care than those that have never been broken.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

123. “Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

124. “A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time – unless she happens to take a second.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

125. “Jealousy is not love, but self-love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

126. “A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

127. “The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

128. “All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

129. “Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

130. “Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

131. “Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

132. “Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

133. “As long as we love, we can forgive.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

134. “It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

135. “It is a common fault never to be satisfied with our fortune, nor dissatisfied with our understanding.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

136. “The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

137. “We have no patience with other people’s vanity because it is offensive to our own.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

138. “Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

139. “Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

140. “The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

141. “Taste may change, but inclination never.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

142. “He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

143. “If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

144. “Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them...”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

145. “We love much better those who endeavor to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For imitation is a sign of esteem, but competition of envy.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

146. “Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

147. “Plenty of people want to be pious, but no one yearns to be humble.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

148. “The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

149. “Old fools are greater fools than young ones.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

150. “Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld