Francois De La Rochefoucauld Quotes
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown.
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.
That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.
The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.
Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.
It is as easy to unknowingly deceive yourself as it is to deceive others.
The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so.
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are.
All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
The shame that arises from praise which we do not deserve often makes us do things we should otherwise never have attempted.
The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.
More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.
It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.
Reconciliation with our enemies is simply a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, or the fear of some unlucky thing from occurring.
Nothing should lessen our satisfaction with ourselves as much as when we notice that we disapprove of something at one time that we approve of at another time.
Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.
To be a great man it is necessary to know how to profit by the whole of our good fortune.
Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
Chance corrects us of many faults that reason would not know how to correct.
Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
Though confidence is very fine, and makes the future sunny; I want no confidence for mine, I'd rather have the money
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
