Francois de La Rochefoucauld
155 quotes
"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."
"If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship."
"Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love."
"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."
"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen."
"In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge."
"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."
"There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations."
"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."
"Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth."
"The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age."
"It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone."
"Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected."
"Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit."
"In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us."
"We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them."
"We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done."
"Taste may change, but inclination never."
"Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness."
"Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while."
"On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly."
"Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth."
"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye."
"Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance."
"We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years."