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
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.
More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.
Strength and weakness of mind are misnomers; they are really nothing but the good or bad health of our bodily organs.
Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity.
None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.
Weak people cannot be sincere.
Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.
Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.