François De La Rochefoucauld Quotes

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.

Extreme boredom provides its own antidote.

We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

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

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

In jealousy there is more of self-love than love

We are often more treacherous through weakness than calculation

Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad.

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power

It is with true love as with ghosts. Every one talks of it but few have seen it.

How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship.

He who lives without folly is not as wise as he may think.

It is much easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all of those that follow it.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

We forgive so long as we love.

True love is like ghosts which many believe in, but few have seen.

Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever.

A weakling is incapable of sincerity.

Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.