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For The Credit Of Virtue We Must Admit That The Greatest Misfortunes Of Men Are Those Into Which They Fall Through Their Crimes.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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For The Credit Of

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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For The Credit Of Virtue We Must Admit That The Greatest Misfortunes Of Men Are Those Into Which They Fall Through Their Crimes.

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Though Confidence Is Very Fine, And Makes The Future Sunny; I Want No Confidence For Mine, I'd Rather Have The Money

We Make Promises To The Extent That We Hope-and Keep Them To The Extent That We Fear.

It Is Easier For A Man To Be Thought Fit For An Employment That He Has Not, Than For One He Stands Already Possessed Of, And Is Exercising.

There Is Something To Be Said For Jealousy, Because It Only Designs The Preservation Of Some Good Which We Either Have Or Think Wehave A Right To. But Envy Is A Raging Madness That Cannot Bear The Wealth Or Fortune Of Others.

There Are A Great Many Men Valued In Society Who Have Nothing To Recommend Them But Serviceable Vices.

Self-love, As It Happens To Be Well Or Ill Conducted, Constitutes Virtue And Vice.

We Confess To Little Faults Only To Persuade Ourselves We Have No Great Ones.

One Kind Of Flirtation Is To Boast We Never Flirt.

The Boldest Stroke And Best Act Of Friendship Is Not To Disclose Our Own Failings To A Friend, But To Show Him His Own.

We Only Confess Our Little Faults To Persuade People That We Have No Big Ones.

Keeping Secrets

In Their Early Passions Women Are In Love With The Lover, Later They Are In Love With Love.

Weakness Is The Only Fault That Is Incorrigible.

Raillery Is More Insupportable Than Wrong; Because We Have A Right To Resent Injuries, But Are Ridiculous In Being Angry At A Jest.

As It Is The Characteristic Of Great Wits To Say Much In Few Words, So Small Wits Seem To Have The Gift Of Speaking Much And Saying Nothing.

Sincerity Is A Certain Openness Of Heart. It Is To Be Found In Very Few, And What We Commonly Look Upon To Be So Is Only A Cunningsort Of Dissimulation, To Insinuate Ourselves Into The Confidence Of Others.

In Love, The Quickest Is Always The Best Cure.

We Acknowledge Our Faults In Order To Repair By Our Sincerity The Damage They Have Done Us In The Eyes Of Others.

The Best Way To Rise In Society Is To Use All Possible Means Of Persuading People That One Has Already Risen In Society.

To Establish Yourself In The World A Person Must Do All They Can To Appear Already Established.

We Give Advice, But We Cannot Give The Wisdom To Profit By It.

The Greatest Part Of Intimate Confidences Proceed From A Desire Either To Be Pitied Or Admired.

We Sometimes Imagine We Hate Flattery, But We Only Hate The Way We Are Flattered.

No One Thinks Fortune So Blind As Those She Has Been Least Kind To.

We Sometimes Condemn The Present, By Praising The Past; And Show Our Contempt Of What Is Now, By Our Esteem For What Is No More.

Humility Is Often Only Feigned Submission Which People Use To Render Others Submissive. It Is A Subterfuge Of Pride Which Lowers Itself In Order To Rise.

We Never Desire Strongly, What We Desire Rationally.

What Makes The Pain We Feel From Shame And Jealousy So Cutting Is That Vanity Can Give Us No Assistance In Bearing Them.

We Are Never So Generous As When Giving Advice.

The Extreme Delight We Experience In Talking About Ourselves Should Warn Us That Those Who Listen Do Not Share It.

We Are Never Either So Fortunate Or So Misfortunate As We Imagine.

Envy Is Destroyed By True Friendship, As Coquetry By True Love.

In The Intercourse Of Life, We Please More By Our Faults Than By Our Good Qualities.

However Much We May Distrust Men's Sincerity, We Always Believe They Speak To Us More Sincerely Than To Others.

Tastes In Young People Are Changed By Natural Impetuosity, And In The Aged Are Preserved By Habit.

We Frequently Are Troublesome To Others, When We Think It Impossible For Us Ever To Be So.

Neither The Sun Nor Death Can Be Looked At Steadily.

Jealousy Is Not So Much The Love Of Another As The Love Of Ourselves.

If Vanity Does Not Entirely Overthrow The Virtues, At Least It Makes Them All Totter.

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.

Repentance Is Not So Much Remorse For What We Have Done As The Fear Of The Consequences.

The Art Of Putting Into Play Mediocre Qualities Often Begets More Reputation Than Is Achieved By True Merit.

Women Can More Easily Conquer Their Passion Than Their Coquetterie.

There Are Very Few People Who Are Not Ashamed Of Having Been In Love When They No Longer Love Each Other.

The More One Loves A Mistress, The More One Is Ready To Hate Her.

In All Aspects Of Life, We Take On A Part And An Appearance To Seem To Be What We Wish To Be--and Thus The World Is Merely Composed Of Actors.

To Awaken A Man Who Is Deceived As To His Own Merit Is To Do Him As Bad A Turn As That Done To The Athenian Madman Who Was Happy In Believing That All The Ships Touching At The Port Belonged To Him.

What Makes False Reckoning, As Regards Gratitude, Is That The Pride Of The Giver And The Receiver Cannot Agree As To The Value Of The Benefit.

Men Are Inconsolable Concerning The Treachery Of Their Friends Or The Deceptions Of Their Enemies; And Yet They Are Often Very Highly Satisfied To Be Both Deceived And Betrayed By Their Own Selves.

He That Fancies Such A Sufficiency In Himself That He Can Live Without All The World Is Greatly Mistaken; But He That Imagines Himself So Necessary That Other People Cannot Live Without Him Is A Great Deal More Mistaken.

A Man Does Not Please Long When He Has Only Species Of Wit.

Old Age Is A Tyrant, Who Forbids, Under Pain Of Death, The Pleasures Of Youth.

When A Man Must Force Himself To Be Faithful In His Love, This Is Hardly Better Than Unfaithfulness.

There Are Some Faults Which, When Well Managed, Make A Greater Figure Than Virtue Itself.

The Person Giving The Advice Returns The Confidence Placed In Him With A Disinterested Eagerness... And He Is Usually Guided Only By His Own Interest Or Reputation.

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.

Truth Does Less Good In The World Than Its Appearances Do Harm.

There Are No Circumstances, However Unfortunate, That Clever People Do Not Extract Some Advantage From.

How Can We Expect Another To Keep Our Secret If We Have Been Unable To Keep It Ourselves?

Keeping Secrets

The Health Of The Soul Is Something We Can Be No More Sure Of Than That Of The Body; And Though A Man May Seem Far From The Passions, Yet He Is In As Much Danger Of Falling Into Them As One In A Perfect State Of Health Of Having A Fit Of Sickness.

Pride, Which Inspires Us With So Much Envy, Is Sometimes Of Use Toward The Moderating Of It Too.

Never Give Anyone The Advice To Buy Or Sell Shares, Because The Most Benevolent Price Of Advice Can Turn Out Badly.

Weak People Cannot Be Sincere.

Some Reproaches Praise; Some Praises Reproach.

The Duration Of Our Passions Is No More Dependent On Ourselves Than The Duration Of Our Lives.

Misers Mistake Gold For Their Good; Whereas 'tis Only A Means Of Attaining It.

None But The Contemptible Are Apprehensive Of Contempt.

The Distempers Of The Soul Have Their Relapses, As Many And As Dangerous As Those Of The Body; And What We Take For A Perfect Cureis Generally Either An Abatement Of The Same Disease Or The Changing Of That For Another.

Bravery In Simple Soldiers Is A Dangerous Trade, To Which They Have Bound Themselves To Get Their Livelihood.

To Understand Matters Rightly We Should Understand Their Details; And As That Knowledge Is Almost Infinite, Our Knowledge Is Always Superficial And Imperfect.

We Easily Forget Crimes That Are Known To None But Ourselves.

We Often Forgive Those Who Bore Us, But We Cannot Forgive Those Whom We Bore.

Most Men, Like Plants, Possess Hidden Qualities Which Chance Discovers.

Love, All Agreeable As It Is, Charms More By The Fashion In Which It Displays Itself, Than By Its Own True Merit.

Of All Our Faults, The One We Avow Most Easily Is Idleness; We Persuade Ourselves That It Is Allied To All The Peaceable Virtues,and As For The Others, That It Does Not Destroy Them Utterly, But Only Suspends The Exercise Of Their Functions.

Few Things Are Impracticable In Themselves; And It Is For Want Of Application, Rather Than Of Means, That Men Fail To Succeed.

In The Human Heart One Generation Of Passions Follows Another; From The Ashes Of One Springs The Spark Of The Next.

If We Resist Our Passions, It Is More Due To Their Weakness Than Our Strength.

One Of The Greatest And Also The Commonest Of Faults Is For Men To Believe That, Because They Never Hear Their Shortcomings Spoken Of, Or Read About Them In Cold Print, Others Can Have No Knowledge Of Them. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Reflections Of Lichtenberg We Are Often More Agreeable Through Our Faults Than Our Good Qualities.

Tis A Sort Of Coquetry To Boast That We Never Coquet.

Truth Is The Foundation And The Reason Of The Perfection Of Beauty, For Of Whatever Stature A Thing May Be, It Cannot Be Beautiful-and Perfect, Unless It Be Truly What It Should Be, And Possess Truly All That It Should Have.

A Man Often Believes Himself Leader When He Is Led; As His Mind Endeavors To Reach One Goal, His Heart Insensibly Drags Him Towards Another.

In All Professions Each Affects A Look And An Exterior To Appear What He Wishes The World To Believe That He Is. Thus We May Say That The Whole World Is Made Up Of Appearances.

The Prospect Of Being Pleased Tomorrow Will Never Console Me For The Boredom Of Today.

Virtue Would Go Far If Vanity Did Not Keep It Company.

Hypocrisy Is The Homage Vice Pays To Virtue.

Fortune Makes Our Virtues And Vices Visible, Just As Light Does The Objects Of Sight.

There Is Such A Thing As A General Revolution Which Changes The Taste Of Men As It Changes The Fortunes Of The World.

We Are Never So Happy, Nor So Unhappy, As We Suppose Ourselves To Be.

Penetration Has An Air Of Divination; It Pleases Our Vanity More Than Any Other Quality Of The Mind.

We Are Never So Ridiculous Through What We Are As Through What We Pretend To Be.

To Praise Great Actions With Sincerity May Be Said To Be Taking Part In Them.

There Are People Who Would Never Have Been In Love, Had They Never Heard Love Spoken Of.

Without Humility, We Keep All Our Defects; And They Are Only Crusted Over By Pride, Which Conceals Them From Others, And Often From Ourselves.

The Passions Of Youth Are Not More Dangerous To Health Than Is The Lukewarmness Of Old Age.

We May Seem Great In An Employment Below Our Worth, But We Very Often Look Little In One That Is Too Big For Us.

There Are Few Virtuous Women Who Are Not Bored With Their Trade.

Moderation Is An Ostentatious Proof Of Our Strength Of Character.

Hope Is The Last Thing That Dies In Man.

True Bravery Is Shown By Performing Without Witness What One Might Be Capable Of Doing Before All The World.

Narrow Minds Think Nothing Right That Is Above Their Own Capacity.

There Are Few Occasions When We Should Make A Bad Bargain By Giving Up The Good On Condition That No Ill Was Said Of Us.

Self-love Increases Or Diminishes For Us The Good Qualities Of Our Friends, In Proportion To The Satisfaction We Feel With Them; And We Judge Of Their Merit By The Manner In Which They Act Towards Us.

Jealousy Is Bred In Doubts. When Those Doubts Change Into Certainties, Then The Passion Either Ceases Or Turns Absolute Madness.

A Gentleman May Love Like A Lunatic, But Not Like A Beast.

We Do Not Lack Strength So Much As The Will To Use It; And Very Often Our Imagining That Things Are Impossible Is Nothing But An Excuse Of Our Own Contriving, To Reconcile Ourselves To Our Own Idleness.

Propriety Is The Least Of All Laws, And The Most Observed.

We Often Pay Our Debts Not Because It Is Only Fair That We Should, But To Make Future Loans Easier.

In Order To Succeed In The World People Do Their Upmost To Appear Successful.

However Greatly We Distrust The Sincerity Of Those We Converse With, Yet Still We Think They Tell More Truth To Us Than To Anyone Else.

There Are Follies As Catching As Contagious Disorders.

Passion Often Makes Fools Of The Wisest Men And Gives The Silliest Wisdom.

Sobriety Is Concern For One's Health - Or Limited Capacity.

The Force We Use On Ourselves, To Prevent Ourselves From Loving, Is Often More Cruel Than The Severest Treatment At The Hands Of One Loved.

Preserving The Serious Health Condition Is Usually Painful.

Women Do Not Know All Their Powers Of Flirtation.

Humility Is The Sure Evidence Of Christian Virtues. Without It, We Retain All Our Faults Still, And They Are Only Covered Over With Pride, Which Hides Them From Other Men's Observation, And Sometimes From Our Own Too.

What Makes Vanity So Insufferable To Us, Is That It Hurts Our Own.

Wit Sometimes Enables Us To Act Rudely With Impunity.

Loyalty Is In Most People Only A Ruse Used By Self-interest To Attract Confidence.

Pity Is A Sense Of Our Own Misfortunes In Those Of Another Man; It Is A Sort Of Foresight Of The Disasters Which May Befall Ourselves. We Assist Others,, In Order That They May Assist Us On Like Occasions; So That The Services We Offer To The Unfortunate Are In Reality So Many Anticipated Kindnesses To Ourselves.

Whatever Ignominy Or Disgrace We Have Incurred, It Is Almost Always In Our Power To Reestablish Our Reputation.

Those Who Are Overreached By Our Cunning Are Far From Appearing To Us As Ridiculous As We Appear To Ourselves When The Cunning Of Others Has Overreached Us.

Generosity Is The Vanity Of Giving.

Vices Are Ingredients Of Virtues Just As Poisons Are Ingredients Of Remedies. Prudence Mixes And Tempers Them And Uses Them Effectively Against Life's Ills.

In Every Walk Of Life Each Man Puts On A Personality And Outward Appearance So As To Look What He Wants To Be Thought; In Fact You Might Say That Society Is Entirely Made Up Of Assumed Personalities.

When Great Men Permit Themselves To Be Cast Down By The Continuance Of Misfortune, They Show Us That They Were Only Sustained By Ambition, And Not By Their Mind; So That Plus A Great Vanity, Heroes Are Made Like Other Men.

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.

Beautiful Coquettes Are Quacks Of Love.

Not To Love Is In Love An Infallible Means Of Being Loved.

The Wind Which Snuffs The Candle Fans The Fire.

Hope And Fear Are Inseparable.

It Is Safer To Do Most Men Harm Than To Do Them Too Much Good.

The Judgments Our Enemies Make About Us Come Nearer To The Truth Than Those We Make About Ourselves.

Minds Of Moderate Caliber Ordinarily Condemn Everthing Which Is Beyond Their Range.

Friendship Is Insipid To Those Who Have Experienced Love.

We Are Never So Easily Deceived As When We Imagine We Are Deceiving Others.

Deceiving Others

Constancy In Love Is A Perpetual Inconstancy Which Fixes Our Hearts Successively To All The Qualities Of The Person Loved--sometimes Admiring One And Sometimes Another Above All The Rest--so That This Constancy Roves As Far As It Can, And Is No Better Than Inconstancy, Confined Within The Compass Of One Person.

History Never Embraces More Than A Small Part Of Reality

Our Actions Seem To Have Their Lucky And Unlucky Stars, To Which A Great Part Of That Blame And That Commendation Is Due Which Is Given To The Actions Themselves.

If It Were Not For Poetry, Few Men Would Ever Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

We Have Not Enough Strength To Follow All Our Reason.

There Is No Disguise Which Can Hide Love For Long Where It Exists, Or Simulate It Where It Does Not.

Neither Love Nor Fire Can Subsist Without Perpetual Motion; Both Cease To Live So Soon As They Cease To Hope, Or To Fear.

Perpetual Motion

The Tranquility Or Agitation Of Our Temper Does Not Depend So Much On The Big Things Which Happen To Us In Life, As On The Pleasant Or Unpleasant Arrangements Of The Little Things Which Happen Daily.

However Rare True Love May Be, It Is Less So Than True Friendship.

Nothing Hinders A Thing From Being Natural So Much As The Straining Ourselves To Make It Seem So.

Perfect Courage And Utter Cowardice Are Two Extremes Which Rarely Occur.

Some Good Qualities Are Like The Senses: Those Who Are Entirely Deprived Of Them Can Have No Notion Of Them.

When The Soul Is Ruffled By The Remains Of One Passion, It Is More Disposed To Entertain A New One Than When It Is Entirely Curedand At Rest From All.

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.

Great Men Should Not Have Great Faults.

Fortune Never Seems So Blind To Any As To Those On Whom She Bestows No Favors.

It Is Necessary, In Order To Know Things Well, To Know The Particulars Of Them; And These, Being Infinite, Make Our Knowledge Eversuperficial And Imperfect.

It Is Given To Few Persons To Keep This Secret Well. Those Who Lay Down Rules Too Often Break Them, And The Safest We Are Able To Give Is To Listen Much, To Speak Little, And To Say Nothing That That Will Ever Give Ground Or Regret.

Women In Love Sooner Forgive Great Indiscretions Than Small Infidelities.

Unfaithfulness Ought To Extinguish Love, And We Should Not Be Jealous When There Is Reason To Be. Only Those Who Give No Grounds For Jealousy Are Worthy Of It.

Nature Creates Ability; Luck Provides It With Opportunity.

Thinkers Think And Doers Do. But Until The Thinkers Do And The Doers Think, Progress Will Be Just Another Word In The Already Overburdened Vocabulary By Sense.

Quarrels Would Not Last Long If The Fault Was Only On One Side.

The Most Subtle Of Our Acts Is To Simulate Blindness For Snares That We Know Are Set For Us.

As Long As We Love, We Can Forgive.

Hope And Fear Are Inseparable. There Is No Hope Without Fear, Nor Any Fear Without Hope.

We Feel Good And Ill Only In Proportion To Our Self-love.

There Are Some People Upon Whom Their Very Faults And Failings Sit Gracefully; And There Are Others Whose Very Excellencies And Accomplishments Do Not Become Them.

In The Human Heart New Passions Are Forever Being Born; The Overthrow Of One Almost Always Means The Rise Of Another.

A Well-trained Mind Has Less Difficulty In Submitting To Than In Guiding An Ill-trained Mind.

The Constancy Of The Wise Is Only The Art Of Keeping Disquietude To One's Self.

Old Men Delight In Giving Good Advice As A Consolation For The Fact That They Can No Longer Set Bad Examples.

It Is The Prerogative Of Great Men Only To Have Great Defects.

We Often Credit Ourselves With Vices The Reverse Of What We Have, Thus When Weak We Boast Of Our Obstinacy.

The Happiness And Unhappiness Of Men Depends As Much On Their Ethics As On Fortune.

It Is Easier To Deceive Yourself, And To Do So Unperceived, Than To Deceive Another.

It's The Height Of Folly To Want To Be The Only Wise One.

Silence Is The Best Security To The Man Who Distrusts Himself.

Customary Use Of Artifice Is The Sign Of A Small Mind, And It Almost Always Happens That He Who Uses It To Cover One Spot Uncovers Himself In Another.

There Is No Praise We Have Not Lavished Upon Prudence; And Yet She Cannot Assure To Us The Most Trifling Event.

Everyone Takes Pleasure In Returning Small Obligations, Many People Acknowledge Moderate Ones; But There Are Only A Scarce Few Who Do Not Pay Great Ones With Ingratitude.

There Are Two Things Which Man Cannot Look At Directly Without Flinching: The Sun And Death.

Tricks And Treachery Are Merely Proofs Of Lack Of Skill.

The Measure Of Great Men Should Always Be Measured By The Means They Have Used To Acquire It.

We Should Manage Our Fortune As We Do Our Health - Enjoy It When Good, Be Patient When It Is Bad, And Never Apply Violent Remedies Except In An Extreme Necessity

People Are More Slanderous From Vanity Than From Malice.

To Listen Closely And Reply Well Is The Highest Perfection We Are Able To Attain In The Art Of Conversation.

It Is Far Better To Be Deceived Than Undeceived By Those Whom We Tenderly Love.

We Are Always Bored By The Very People By Whom It Is Vital Not To Be Bored.

Youth Changes Its Tastes By The Warmth Of Its Blood; Age Retains Its Tastes By Habit.

As Uncommon A Thing As True Love Is, It Is Yet Easier To Find Than True Friendship.

There Is Nothing Men Are So Generous Of As Advice.

True Eloquence Consists In Saying All That Should Be Said, And That Only.

Funeral Pomp Is More For The Vanity Of The Living Than For The Honor Of The Dead.

There Are A Great Many Simpletons Who Know Themselves To Be So, And Who Make A Very Cunning Use Of Their Own Simplicity.

The Defects Of The Mind, Like Those Of The Face, Grow Worse With Age.

Avarice Often Produces Opposite Results: There Are An Infinite Number Of Persons Who Sacrifice Their Property To Doubtful And Distant Expectations; Others Mistake Great Future Advantages For Small Present Interests.

It Is Easier To Rule Others Than To Keep From Being Ruled Oneself.

Too Great Refinement Is False Delicacy, And True Delicacy Is Solid Refinement.

We Easily Forget Our Faults When No One Knows Them But Ourselves.

He That Would Be A Great Man Must Learn To Turn Every Accident To Some Advantage.

If We Judge Love By Most Of Its Effects, It Resembles Rather Hatred Than Affection.

Eloquence: Saying The Proper Thing And Stopping.

We Pardon As Long As We Love.

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