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 is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.