Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

353. “We are better pleased to see those on whom we confer benefits than those from whom we receive them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

356. “No one thinks fortune so blind as those she has been least kind to.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

357. “Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

359. “Few things are impossible in themselves: application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

361. “Our good qualities expose us more to hatred and persecution than all the ill we do.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

363. “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

364. “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

365. “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

366. “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

367. “Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

369. “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

370. “Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

371. “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

372. “The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

374. “The hunger for applause is the source for all conscious literature and heroism.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

376. “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

377. “Every one complains of a poor memory, no one of a weak judgment.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

378. “It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

381. “The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

384. “Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood; age retains its tastes by habit.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

386. “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

387. “The vivacity that augments with years is not far from folly.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

388. “One honor won is a surety for more.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

389. “Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

390. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

392. “Men would not live in society long if they were not each others dupes.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

393. “It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions, – a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

395. “We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

397. “Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

398. “Eloquence: saying the proper thing and stopping.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

399. “Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

400. “That which occasions so many mistakes in the computations of men, when they expect return for favors, is that the giver’s pride and the receiver’s cannot agree upon the value of the kindness done.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld