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Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes - Page 29

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Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.

Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Miracle, Coquetry, Flirtation

Sometimes we think we dislike flattery, but it is only the way it is done that we dislike.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Thinking, Done, Way

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Merit, Fortune

The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Merit, Praise, Envious

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Vanity, Air, Mind
Francois duc de La-Rochefoucauld (1828). “Maximes Et Reflexions Morales Traduites en Grec Moderne Par Wladimir Brunet; Avec Une Traduction Anglaise en Regard”, p.223

The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Philosophical, Self, Color

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love, Heart, Quality

Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love, Pride, Two

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.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love, Names, Numbers

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Love, Different, Copies

Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men, Silence, He Man

Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Ambition, Men, Order

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Ambition, Mean, Interest

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Cheating, Men, Deception

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.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Friends, Men, Self

The most effectual way to be deceived is to believe oneself more cunning than one's neighbors.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Believe, Vanity, Deception

The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking--but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men, Deception, Use

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.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Men, Thinking, Bravery

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Courage, Men, Vanity

Fearlessness is a more than ordinary strength of mind, which raises the soul above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which theprospect of great dangers are used to produce. And by this inward strength it is that heroes preserve themselves in a calm and quiet state, and enjoy a presence of mind and the free use of their reason in the midst of those terrible accidents that amaze and confound other people.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Hero, Presence Of Mind, People

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Strength, Use, Impossible

We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Strength, Reason, Enough

Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Pride, Complaining, Proud

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Pride, Self, Satisfaction

Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Christian, Humility, Pride

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