Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Our good qualities expose us more to hatred and persecution than all the ill we do.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

353. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

355. “One may outwit another, but not all the others.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

357. “We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

362. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

365. “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

366. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

369. “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

370. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

374. “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

375. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

378. “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

379. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— 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 would not live in society long if they were not each others dupes.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

385. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

388. “Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

394. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

396. “The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

400. “In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld