Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes

“It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“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. ”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“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.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty. ”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it. ”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“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. ”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“One forgives to the degree that one loves.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld