Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillacla ʁɔʃfuˈko]; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it. Born in Paris on the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-century...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth15 September 1613
CountryFrance
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.
All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.
There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity.
Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.
The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.
We like to read others but we do not like to be read.
Truth does not do as much good in the world as its imitations do harm.