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
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
Though confidence is very fine, and makes the future sunny; I want no confidence for mine, I'd rather have the money
The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.
Whatever distrust we may have of the sincerity of those who converse with us, we always believe they will tell us more truth than they do to others.
He is safe who admits no one to his confidence.
Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit.
Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge that gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit.
We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?