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 no accidents so unlucky but the prudent may draw some advantage from them.
Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.
Humility is often merely feigned submissiveness assumed in order to subject others, an artifice of pride which stoops to conquer, and although pride has a thousand ways of transforming itself it is never so well disguised and able to take people in as when masquerading as humility.
Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.
There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.
There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.
It is pointless for a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.
A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
To praise great actions is in some sense to share them.
We sometimes condemn the present, by praising the past; and show our contempt of what is now, by our esteem for what is no more.
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.