Quotes from Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred.

Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.

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.

Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.

Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners.

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.

We make promises to the extent that we hope-and keep them to the extent that we fear.

We pardon to the extent that we love.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.

The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.

It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.