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
Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.
Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.
The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.
When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.
The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.
The reason why lovers are never bored together is that they are always talking of themselves.
We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company.
There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.
Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.
What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.
Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.
Were we not proud ourselves, we should not complain of the pride of others.
All men are equally proud. The only difference is that not all take the same methods of showing it.