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
What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.
Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.
The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.
Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.
Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.
We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.
It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.