Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes:

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Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
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.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
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.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves.
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
In love we often doubt what we most believe.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
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.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
The mind cannot long play the heart's role.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.
We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully
Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.
Humility is often merely feigned submissiveness assumed in order to subject others, an artifice of pride which stoops to conquer, and although pride has a thousand ways of transforming itself it is never so well disguised and able to take people in as when masquerading as humility.
What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Some people resemble ballads which are only sung for a certain time.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
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.
It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face--so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.
Tis a sort of coquetry to boast that we never coquet.
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage often brings greater results than actual brilliance
Time's chariot-wheels make their carriage-road in the fairest face.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.
The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.
A clever man reaps some benefit from the worst catastrophe, and a fool can turn even good luck to his disadvantage.
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness of age.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
Women know not the whole of their coquetry.
The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry.

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