Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 8 of 10

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

352. “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

353. “Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own 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. “We bear, all of us, the misfortunes of other people with heroic constancy.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

356. “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

357. “Most women lament not the death of their lovers so much out of real affection for them, as because they would appear worthy of love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

360. “Men’s happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

362. “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

363. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

366. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

381. “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

382. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

384. “There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.”

— 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. “The constancy of sages is nothing but the art of locking up their agitation in their hearts.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

387. “Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.”

— 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. “It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

390. “If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

391. “Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

392. “There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

393. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld