Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."

"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen."

"One forgives to the degree that one loves."

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves."

"If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others."

"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."

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

"We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore."

"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."

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship."

"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."

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

"Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted."

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."

"The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us."

"The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others."

"There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not."

"The heart is forever making the head its fool."

"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"

"The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve."

"We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others."

"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye."

"We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them."

"The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken."

"Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it."

"We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish."

"He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks."

"Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love."

"Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples."