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
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.
Generosity is the vanity of giving.
The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.
Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
We speak little if not egged on by vanity.
If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.
What is called liberality is often merely the vanity of giving.
What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own.
Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.
What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.