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
The world is full of pots jeering at kettles.
Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.
It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.
Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.
However great the advantages given us by nature, it is not she alone, but fortune with her, which makes heroes.
Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.
We are better pleased to see those on whom we confer benefits than those from whom we receive them.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.
The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.
Fortune never appears so blind as to those to whom she does no good.
Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.
We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices.
The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long.