Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

354. “Usually we praise only to be praised.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

357. “Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

359. “To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

360. “Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

362. “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

363. “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

364. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

369. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

372. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

376. “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

377. “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

378. “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

379. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

385. “When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

386. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

388. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

393. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

395. “All men are equally proud. The only difference is that not all take the same methods of showing it.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

397. “It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

398. “The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

400. “If a man doesn’t find ease in himself, ’tis in vain to seek it elsewhere.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld