Top 500 François de La Rochefoucauld Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

356. “Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

357. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

364. “It is as easy to deceive one’s self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

370. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

372. “What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

375. “We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

379. “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

380. “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

381. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

384. “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

385. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

390. “The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

392. “Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

394. “There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

397. “Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld

398. “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

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

— François de La Rochefoucauld

400. “We make promises to the extent that we hope-and keep them to the extent that we fear.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld