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 few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be so.
If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.
The mind is always the patsy of the heart.
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.
It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.
We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.
Only the great can afford to have great defects.
Nothing is rarer than real goodness.
The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.
In growing old, we become more foolish - and more wise.
Nothing is given so profusely as advice.
We speak little if not egged on by vanity.
The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.
There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much.