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
Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes.
Good taste comes more from the judgment than from the mind.
We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.
The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.
It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.
Simplicity is a delicate imposition.
Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.
Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.
There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.
Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.
Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves.
In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.