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
There are reproaches which praise, and praises which defame.
Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed.
We often pride ourselves on even the most criminal passions, but envy is a timid and shamefaced passion we never dare to acknowledge.
Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind.
The duration of our passions is no more dependent on ourselves than the duration of our lives.
In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.
Men would not live in society long if they were not each others dupes.
In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.
Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.
Great names abase, instead of elevating, those who do not know how to bear them.
Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully
Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.
In love deceit nearly always goes further than mistrust.
It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.