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
The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.
It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.
Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.
Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.
We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.
It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.
The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.