Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

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Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 15, 1613

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

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

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

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

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

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

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

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

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld