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
In love we often doubt what we most believe.
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
The heart is forever making the head its fool.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.