Famous Quotes

Quotes by Francois De La Rochefoucauld

• Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
• To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
• Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
• True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
• We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
• We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
• We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
• We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
• We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
• We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
• We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
• We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
• We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.
• We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
• We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
• We pardon to the extent that we love.
• We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
• We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
• We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
• What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
• What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
• What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
• When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
• Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
• You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.