Background Image

...

Men Frequently Do Good Only To Give Themselves Opportunity Of Doing Ill With Impunity.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Men Frequently Do Good

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

...

Men Frequently Do Good Only To Give Themselves Opportunity Of Doing Ill With Impunity.

Views: 16265

Topic

More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It Often Happens That Things Come Into The Mind In A More Finished Form Than Could Have Been Achieved After Much Study.

The One Thing People Are The Most Liberal With, Is Their Advice.

Idleness Is More An Infirmity Of The Mind Than Of The Body.

Luxury And Excessive Refinement Are Sure Forerunners Of The Decadence Of States, Because When All Individuals Seek Their Own Interests They Neglect The Public Weal.

What Makes Lovers Never Tire Of One Another Is That They Talk Always About Themselves.

What Often Prevents Our Abandoning Ourselves To A Single Vice Is, Our Having More Than One.

The Largest Ambition Has The Least Appearance Of Ambition When It Meets With An Absolute Impossibility In Compassing Its Object.

There Are Crimes Which Become Innocent And Even Glorious Through Their Splendor, Number And Excess.

Love Is One And The Same In The Original; But There Are A Thousand Different Copies Of It.

How Deceitful Hope May Be, Yet She Carries Us On Pleasantly To The End Of Life.

Bodily Labor Alleviates The Pains Of The Mind And From This Arises The Happiness Of The Poor

There Is A Kind Of Elevation Which Does Not Depend On Fortune; It Is A Certain Air Which Distinguishes Us, And Seems To Destine Us For Great Things; It Is A Price Which We Imperceptibly Set Upon Ourselves.

The Virtues And Vices Are All Put In Motion By Interest.

The Greatest Part Of Our Faults Are More Excusable Than The Methods That Are Commonly Taken To Conceal Them.

If We Never Flattered Ourselves We Should Have But Scant Pleasure.

The Man Who Leaves A Woman Best Pleased With Herself Is The One Whom She Will Soonest Wish To See.

Men Have Written In The Most Convincing Manner To Prove That Death Is No Evil, And This Opinion Has Been Confirmed On A Thousand Celebrated Occasions By The Weakest Of Men As Well As By Heroes. Even So I Doubt Whether Any Sensible Person Has Ever Believed It, And The Trouble Men Take To Convince Others As Well As Themselves That They Do Shows Clearly That It Is No Easy Undertaking.

There Are Some Persons Who Only Disgust With Their Abilities, There Are Persons Who Please Even With Their Faults.

Too Great Haste To Repay An Obligation Is A Kind Of Ingratitude.

Nothing Is Given So Profusely As Advice.

A True Friend Is The Most Precious Of All Possessions And The One We Take The Least Thought About Acquiring.

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

The Breeding We Give Young People Is Ordinarily But An Additional Self-love, By Which We Make Them Have A Better Opinion Of Themselves.

It Is Not Enough To Have Great Qualities; We Should Also Have The Management Of Them.

Self Discipline

When Love Becomes Labored We Welcome An Act Of Infidelity Towards Ourselves To Free Us From Fidelity.

Kings Do With Men As With Pieces Of Money; They Give Them What Value They Please, And We Are Obliged To Receive Them At Their Current And Not At Their Real Value.

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.

All Our Qualities, Whether Good Or Bad, Are Unstable And Ambiguous, And Almost All Are At The Mery Of Chance.

We Rarely Think People Have Good Sense Unless They Agree With Us.

Even The Most Disinterested Love Is, After All, But A Kind Of Bargain, In Which Self-love Always Proposes To Be The Gainer One Wayor Another.

No Fools Are So Difficult To Manage As Those With Some Brains.

It Is Easier To Fall In Love When You Are Out Of It Than To Get Out Of It When You Are In.

Falling In Love

All Women Seem By Nature To Be Coquettes.

It Is Not Enough That We Should Succeed, But Our Friends Must Fail As Well.

Our Own Distrust Gives A Fair Pretence For The Knavery Of Other People.

There Are Certain Defects Which, Well-mounted, Glitter Like Virtue Itself.

We Are Lazier In Our Minds Than In Our Bodies.

Nothing Is More Ridiculous In Old People That Were Once Good-looking, Than To Forget That They Are Not So Still.

People Always Complain About Their Memories, Never About Their Minds.

Heat Of Blood Makes Young People Change Their Inclinations Often, And Habit Makes Old Ones Keep To Theirs A Great While.

If We Are To Judge Of Love By Its Consequences, It More Nearly Resembles Hatred Than Friendship.

Men Are Not Only Prone To Forget Benefits; They Even Hate Those Who Have Obliged Them, And Cease To Hate Those Who Have Injured Them. The Necessity Of Revenging An Injury, Or Of Recompensing A Benefit Seems A Slavery To Which They Are Unwilling To Submit.

Intrepidity Is An Extraordinary Strength Of Soul, Which Raises It Above The Troubles, Disorders And Emotions Which The Sight Of Great Perils Can Arouse In It; By This Strength Heroes Maintain A Calm Aspect And Preserve Their Reason And Liberty In The Most Surprising And Terrible Accidents.

The Greatest Of All Gifts Is The Power To Estimate Things At Their True Worth

There Are Few People Who Would Not Be Ashamed Of Being Loved When They Love No Longer.

If One Judges Love By The Majority Of Its Effects, It Is More Like Hatred Than Like Friendship.

The Temperament That Produces A Talent For Little Things Is The Opposite Of That Required For Great Ones.

The Greatest Miracle Of Love Is The Cure Of Coquetry.

There Are But Very Few Men Clever Enough To Know All The Mischief They Do.

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?

Not Good Enough

A Resolution Never To Deceive Exposes A Man To Be Often Deceived.

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

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.

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

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

It Is As Easy To Deceive One's Self Without Perceiving It, As It Is Difficult To Deceive Others Without Their Finding Out.

Fortune Converts Everything To The Advantage Of Her Favorites.

Women Find It Far More Difficult To Overcome Their Inclination To Coquetry Than To Overcome Their Love.

We Always Get Bored With Those Whom We Bore.

What We Take For Virtue Is Often But An Assemblage Of Various Ambitions And Activities That Chance, Or Our Own Astuteness, Have Arranged In A Certain Manner; And It Is Not Always Out Of Courage Or Purity That Men Are Brave, And Women Chaste.

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.

Nature Seems At Each Man's Birth To Have Marked Out The Bounds Of His Virtues And Vices, And To Have Determined How Good Or How Wicked That Man Shall Be Capable Of Being.

That Which Makes The Vanity Of Others Unbearable To Us Is That Which Wounds Our Own.

Sometimes We Meet A Fool With Wit, Never One With Discretion.

Affected Simplicity Is A Subtle Imposture.

Things Often Offer Themselves To Our Mind In A More Finished Form In The Very First Thought, Than We Might Have Made Them By Muchart And Study.

Youth Is A Continual Intoxication; It Is The Fever Of Reason.

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

Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

Good Advice Is Something A Man Gives When He Is Too Old To Set A Bad Example.

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

Silence Is The Best Tactic For He Who Distrusts Himself.

The Extreme Pleasure We Take In Speaking Of Ourselves Should Make Us Apprehensive That It Gives Hardly Any To Those Who Listen To Us.

Self-interest Speaks All Manner Of Tongues And Plays All Manner Of Parts, Even That Of Disinterestedness.

If We Had No Faults, We Would Not Derive So Much Pleasure From Noting Those Of Other People.

Jealousy Lives Upon Doubts. It Becomes Madness Or Ceases Entirely As Soon As We Pass From Doubt To Certainty.

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

Keeping Secrets

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

Moderation Is Like Sobriety: You Would Like To Have Some More, But Are Afraid Of Making Yourself Ill.

The Intention Of Never Deceiving Often Exposes Us To Deception.

There Are People Who, Like New Songs, Are In Vogue Only For A Time.

Jealousy Is In A Manner Just And Reasonable, As It Tends To Preserve A Good Which Belongs, Or Which We Believe Belongs To Us, On The Other Hand Envy Is A Fury Which Cannot Endure The Happiness Of Others.

The Mark Of Extraordinary Merit Is To See Those Most Envious Of It Constrained To Praise.

The Ambitious Deceive Themselves In Proposing An End To Their Ambition; That End, When Attained, Becomes A Means.

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

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.

Esteem Never Makes Ingrates.

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.

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

A Man's Worth Has Its Season, Like Fruit.

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.

True Friendship Destroys Envy, And True Love Destroys Coquetterie.

A Clever Man Should Handle His Interests So That Each Will Fall In Suitable Order Of Their Value.

It Is A Common Fault Never To Be Satisfied With Our Fortune, Nor Dissatisfied With Our Understanding.

The Man That Thinks He Loves His Mistress For Her Own Sake Is Mightily Mistaken.

It Appears That Nature Has Hid At The Bottom Of Our Hearts Talents And Abilities Unknown To Us. It Is Only The Passions That Have The Power Of Bringing Them To Light, And Sometimes Give Us Views More True And More Perfect Than Art Could Possibly Do.

We Do Not Despise All Those Who Have Vices, But We Do Despise Those That Have No Virtue.

Our Minds Are As Much Given To Laziness As Our Bodies.

Sometimes There Is Equal Or More Ability In Knowing How To Use Good Advice Than There Is In Giving It.

Our Actions Are Like Blank Rhymes, To Which Everyone Applies What Sense He Pleases.

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

Fortunate Persons Hardly Ever Amend Their Ways: They Always Imagine That They Are In The Right When Fortune Upholds Their Bad Conduct.

Those Great And Glorious Actions That Dazzle Our Eyes With Their Luster Are Represented By Statesmen As The Result Of Great Wisdomand Excellent Design; Whereas, In Truth, They Are Commonly The Effects Of The Humors And Passions.

Envy Is More Irreconcilable Than Hatred.

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

Whatever Distrust We May Have Of The Sincerity Of Those Who Converse With Us, We Always Believe They Will Tell Us More Truth Than They Do To Others.

However We May Conceal Our Passions Under The Veil ... There Is Always Some Place Where They Peep Out.

The Head Does Not Know How To Play The Part Of The Heart For Long.

The Moderation Of Men In The Most Exalted Fortunes Is A Desire To Be Thought Above Those Things That Have Raised Them So High.

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.

It Is Not Always From Valor Or From Chastity That Men Are Brave, And Women Chaste.

We Often Brag That We Are Never Bored With Ourselves, And Are So Vain As Never To Think Ourselves Bad Company.

There Is Nothing Men Are So Generous Of As Advice.

Everyone Agrees That A Secret Should Be Kept Intact, But Everyone Does Not Agree As To The Nature And Importance Of Secrecy. Too Often We Consult Ourselves As To What We Should Say, What We Should Leave Unsaid. There Are Few Permanent Secrets, And The Scruple Against Revealing Them Will Not Last Forever.

Those Who Have The Most Cunning Affect All Their Lives To Condemn Cunning; That They May Make Use Of It On Some Great Occasion, And To Some Great End.

Politeness Is A Desire To Be Treated Politely, And To Be Esteemed Polite Oneself.

Good Taste Comes More From The Judgment Than From The Mind.

Our Wisdom Is No Less At Fortune's Mercy Than Our Wealth.

In Love Deceit Almost Always Outstrips Distrust.

The Trust That We Put In Ourselves Makes Us Feel Trust In Others.

In Love We Often Doubt What We Most Believe.

Not All Who Discharge Their Debts Of Gratitude Should Flatter Themselves That They Are Grateful.

One Cannot Answer For His Courage When He Has Never Been In Danger.

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

The Praise We Give To New Comers Into The World Arises From The Envy We Bear To Those Who Are Established.

The Reason Why So Few People Are Agreeable In Conversation Is That Each Is Thinking More About What He Intends To Say Than Others Are Saying.

Listening To Others

There Is Merit Without Rank, But There Is No Rank Without Some Merit.

Nothing Ought More To Humiliate Men Who Have Merited Great Praise Than The Care They Still Take To Boast Of Little Things.

A Person Well Satisfied With Themselves Is Seldom Satisfied With Others, And Others, Rarely Are With Them.

Nothing Ought In Reason To Mortify Our Self-satisfaction More That The Considering That We Condemn At One Time What We Highly Approve And Commend At Another.

As We Grow Older We Grow Both More Foolish And Wiser At The Same Time.

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

Innocence Does Not Find Near So Much Protection As Guilt.

True Love Is Like Ghosts, Which Everyone Talks About And Few Have Seen.

Only Strong Natures Can Really Be Sweet Ones; Those That Seem Sweet Are In General Only Weak, And May Easily Turn Sour.

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.

We Seldom Find Any Person Of Good Sense, Except Those Who Share Our Opinions.

The Mind Cannot Long Play The Heart's Role.

We Are Easily Comforted For The Misfortunes Of Our Friends, When Those Misfortunes Give Us An Occasion Of Expressing Our Affection And Solicitude.

We Should Wish For Few Things With Eagerness, If We Perfectly Knew The Nature Of That Which Was The Object Of Our Desire.

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

Gratitude Is Like The Good Faith Of Traders: It Maintains Commerce, And We Often Pay, Not Because It Is Just To Discharge Our Debts, But That We May More Readily Find People To Trust Us.

There Are Few People Who Are More Often In The Wrong Than Those Who Cannot Endure To Be So.

If We Did Not Flatter Ourselves, The Flattery Of Others Could Never Harm Us.

Happy People Rarely Correct Their Faults; They Consider Themselves Vindicated, Since Fortune Endorses Their Evil Ways.

The Truest Comparison We Can Make Of Love Is To Liken It To A Fever; We Have No More Power Over The One Than The Other, Either As To Its Violence Or Duration.

Love Often Leads On To Ambition, But Seldom Does One Return From Ambition To Love.

Before We Passionately Desire A Thing, We Should Examine The Happiness Of Its Possessor.

Almost Everyone Takes Pleasure In Repaying Trifling Obligations, Very Many Feel Gratitude For Those That Are Moderate; But There Is Scarcely Anyone Who Is Not Ungrateful For Those That Are Weighty.

We Are More Often Treacherous Through Weakness Than Through Calculation.

Self-interest Makes Some People Blind, And Others Sharp-sighted.

Old People Love To Give Good Advice; It Compensates Them For Their Inability To Set A Bad Example.

Inability To Love

A Small Degree Of Wit, Accompanied By Good Sense, Is Less Tiresome In The Long Run Than A Great Amount Of Wit Without It.

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

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

Keeping Secrets

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

Hope, Deceitful As It Is, Carries Us Through Life Agreeably Enough.

Love Has Its Name Borrowed By A Great Number Of Dealings And Affairs That Are Attributed To It--in Which It Has No Greater Part Than The Doge In What Is Done At Venice.

A Great Many Men's Gratitude Is Nothing But A Secret Desire To Hook In More Valuable Kindnesses Hereafter.

Strength And Weakness Of Mind Are Misnomers; They Are Really Nothing But The Good Or Bad Health Of Our Bodily Organs.

Our Repentances Are Generally Not So Much A Concern And Remorse For The Harm We Have Done, As A Fear Of The Harm We May Have Brought Upon Ourselves.

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

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.

Few People Have The Wisdom To Prefer The Criticism That Would Do Them Good, To The Praise That Deceives Them.

Those Only Are Despicable Who Fear To Be Despised.

It Is Most Difficult To Speak When We Are Ashamed Of Being Silent.

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.

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

The Moderation Of Fortunate People Comes From The Calm Which Good Fortune Gives To Their Tempers.

Passions Often Produce Their Contraries: Avarice Sometimes Leads To Prodigality, And Prodigality To Avarice; We Are Often Obstinate Through Weakness And Daring Through Timidity.

The Moderation Of People In Prosperity Is The Effect Of A Smooth And Composed Temper, Owing To The Calm Of Their Good Fortune.

The Daily Employment Of Cunning Marks A Little Mind, It Generally Happens That Those Who Resort To It In One Respect To Protect Themselves Lay Themselves Open To Attack In Another.

It Is Not In The Power Of Even The Most Crafty Dissimulation To Conceal Love Long, Where It Really Is, Nor To Counterfeit It Long Where It Is Not.

The Older A Fool Is, The Worse He Is.

We Have No Patience With Other People's Vanity Because It Is Offensive To Our Own.

Our Temper Sets A Price Upon Every Gift That We Receive From Fortune.

The Gallantry Of The Mind Consists In Agreeable Flattery.

A Clever Man Reaps Some Benefit From The Worst Catastrophe, And A Fool Can Turn Even Good Luck To His Disadvantage.

We Should Not Be Much Concerned About Faults We Have The Courage To Own.

The Intention Of Cheating No One Lays Us Open To Being Cheated Ourselves.

Ordinary Men Commonly Condemn What Is Beyond Them.

Silence Is The Safest Course For Any Man To Adopt Who Distrust Himself.

The Most Violent Passions Sometimes Leave Us At Rest, But Vanity Agitates Us Constantly.

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

Honest People Will Respect Us For Our Merit: The Public, For Our Luck.

Fortune Never Appears So Blind As To Those To Whom She Does No Good.

It Is With True Love As It Is With Ghosts; Everyone Talks About It, But Few Have Seen It.

The Common Foible Of Women Who Have Been Handsome Is To Forget That They Are No Longer So.

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.

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.

It Is Not Always For Virtue's Sake That Women Are Virtuous.

Our Minds Are Lazier Than Our Bodies.

Extreme Boredom Provides Its Own Antidote.

Passion Often Renders The Most Clever Man A Fool, And Sometimes Renders The Most Foolish Man Clever.

If You Cannot Find Peace In Yourself, It Is Useless To Look For It Elsewhere.

Most Men Expose Themselves In Battle Enough To Save Their Honor, Few Wish To Do So More Than Sufficiently, Or Than Is Necessary To Make The Design For Which They Expose Themselves Succeed.

Few Are Sufficiently Wise To Prefer Censure Which Is Useful To Praise Which Is Treacherous.

The Pleasure Of Love Is In The Loving; And There Is More Joy In The Passion One Feels Than In That Which One Inspires.

The Health Of The Soul Is As Precarious As That Of The Body; For When We Seem Secure From Passions, We Are No Less In Danger Of Their Infection Than We Are Of Falling Ill When We Appear To Be Well.

Affected Simplicity Is An Elegant Imposture.

Trending Author

Joey Lauren Adams

Category