Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

352. “We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

353. “Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

354. “We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

355. “Considering how little the beginning or the ceasing to love is in our own power, it is foolish and unreasonable for the lover or his mistress to complain of one another’s inconstancy.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

356. “Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

357. “We bear, all of us, the misfortunes of other people with heroic constancy.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

358. “That man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

359. “We speak little if not egged on by vanity.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

360. “Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

361. “The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

362. “Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

363. “All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

364. “Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

365. “The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

366. “It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

367. “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.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

368. “It is as easy to unknowingly deceive yourself as it is to deceive others.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

369. “We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

370. “Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

371. “The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness of age.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

372. “Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

373. “Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

374. “A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

375. “Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

376. “The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

377. “Time’s chariot-wheels make their carriage-road in the fairest face.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

378. “The mind is always the patsy of the heart.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

379. “Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

380. “It’s the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

381. “In love deceit nearly always goes further than mistrust.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

382. “Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

383. “Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

384. “A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

385. “Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

386. “One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

387. “What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

388. “It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

389. “We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

390. “Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

391. “Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

392. “We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

393. “We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

394. “We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

395. “Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

396. “Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw upon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

397. “The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

398. “Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

399. “Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

400. “If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld