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

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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There Are Very Few

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

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

If There Be A Love Pure And Free From The Admixture Of Our Other Passions, It Is That Which Lies Hidden In The Bottom Of Our Heart, And Which We Know Not Ourselves.

Some Men Are Like Ballads, That Are In Everyone's Mouth A Little While.

We Often Make Use Of Envenomed Praise, That Reveals On The Rebound, As It Were, Defects In Those Praised Which We Dare Not Exposeany Other Way.

We Have Not Enough Strength To Follow All Our Reason.

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.

We Get So Much In The Habit Of Wearing Disguises Before Others That We Finally Appear Disguised Before Ourselves.

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

There Are Heroes In Evil As Well As In Good.

Praise Is Flattery, Artful, Hidden, Delicate, Which Gratifies Differently Him Who Praises And Him Who Is Praised. The One Takes It As The Reward Of Merit, The Other Bestows It To Show His Impartiality And Knowledge.

As Love Increases, Prudence Diminishes.

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.

We Should Scarcely Desire Things Ardently If We Were Perfectly Acquainted With What We Desire.

Gallantry Of Mind Consists In Saying Flattering Things In An Agreeable Manner.

Nothing Is Rarer Than True Good Nature; They Who Are Reputed To Have It Are Generally Only Pliant Or Weak.

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

The Vices Enter Into The Composition Of The Virtues, As Poisons Into That Of Medicines. Prudence Collects And Arranges Them, And Uses Them Beneficially Against The Ills Of Life.

Solemnity Is A Device Of The Body To Hide The Faults Of The Mind.

Men Give Away Nothing So Liberally As Their Advice.

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

The Pleasure Of Love Is In Loving; We Are Happier In The Passion We Feel Than In What We Inspire.

Weakness Of Character Is The Only Defect Which Cannot Be Amended.

It Is A Mistake To Imagine, That The Violent Passions Only, Such As Ambition And Love, Can Triumph Over The Rest. Idleness, Languid As It Is, Often Masters Them All; She Influences All Our Designs And Actions, And Insensibly Consumes And Destroys Both Passions And Virtues.

Preserving Health By Too Severe A Rule Is A Worrisome Malady.

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

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

In Infants, Levity Is A Prettiness; In Men A Shameful Defect; But In Old Age, A Monstrous Folly.

Imagination Does Not Enable Us To Invent As Many Different Contradictions As There Are By Nature In Every Heart.

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

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

Humility Is Often Only A Feigned Submissiveness By Which Men Hope To Bring Other People To Submit To Them; It Is A More Calculated Sort Of Pride.

However Wicked Men May Be, They Do Not Dare Openly To Appear The Enemies Of Virtue, And When They Desire To Persecute Her They Either Pretend To Believe Her False Or Attribute Crimes To Her.

Whatever Pretended Causes We May Blame Our Afflictions Upon, It Is Often Nothing But Self-interest And Vanity That Produce Them.

The Height Of Cleverness Is To Be Able To Conceal It.

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.

A Work Can Become Modern Only If It Is First Postmodern. Postmodernism Thus Understood Is Not Modernism At Its End But In The Nascent State, And This State Is Constant.

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

Those Who Are Themselves Incapable Of Great Crimes Are Ever Backward To Suspect Others.

The Smallest Fault Of Women Who Give Themselves Up To Love Is To Love.

We Own Up To Minor Failings, But Only So As To Convince Others That We Have No Major Ones.

History Never Embraces More Than A Small Part Of Reality

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

Before Strongly Desiring Anything, We Should Look Carefully Into The Happiness Of Its Present Owner.

A Weak Mind Is The Only Defect Out Of Our Power To Mend.

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

Coquetry Is The Essential Characteristic, And The Prevalent Humor Of Women; But They Do Not All Practice It, Because The Coquetry Of Some Is Restrained By Fear Or By Reason.

The Great Interests Of Man: Air And Light, The Joy Of Having A Body, The Voluptuousness Of Looking.

A Wise Man Should Order His Interests, And Set Them All In Their Proper Places. This Order Is Often Troubled By Greed, Which Putsus Upon Pursuing So Many Things At Once That, In Eagerness For Matters Of Less Consideration, We Grasp At Trifles, And Let Go Things Of Greater Value.

Flattery Is False Money, Which Would Not Be Current Were It Not For Our Vanity.

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

There Is An Excess Both In Happiness And Misery Above Our Power Of Sensation.

Hypocrisy Is The Homage Vice Pays To Virtue.

One Is Never As Happy Or As Unhappy As One Thinks.

We Are So Accustomed To Disguise Ourselves To Others That In The End We Become Disguised To Ourselves.

A Man Is Sometimes Better Off Deceived About The One He Loves, Than Undeceived.

The Violence We Do To Ourselves In Order To Remain Faithful To The One We Love Is Hardly Better Than An Act Of Infidelity.

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

A Man Convinced Of His Own Merit Will Accept Misfortune As An Honor, For Thus Can He Persuade Others, As Well As Himself, That He Is A Worthy Target For The Arrows Of Fate.

It Is No Tragedy To Do Ungrateful People Favors, But It Is Unbearable To Be Indebted To A Scoundrel.

Ungrateful People

We May Say Of Agreeableness, As Distinct From Beauty, That It Is A Symmetry Whose Rules Are Unknown.

The Only Good Copies Are Those Which Make Us See The Absurdity Of Bad Originals.

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

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

Deceiving Others

Some Follies Are Caught, Like Contagious Diseases.

Humility Is The Worst Form Of Conceit.

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

There Are Few People More Convinced Of Their Own Genius Than Those Who Complain Of How Stupid They Are.

Some Accidents There Are In Life That A Little Folly Is Necessary To Help Us Out Of.

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

It Is More Often From Pride Than From Defective Understanding That People Oppose Established Opinions: They Find The Best Places Taken In The Good Party And Are Reluctant To Accept Inferior Ones.

Though Most Of The Friendships Of The World Ill Deserve The Name Of Friendships; Yet A Man May Make Use Of Them On Occasion, As Of A Traffic Whose Returns Are Uncertain, And In Which 'tis Usual To Be Cheated.

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.

We Promise According To Our Hopes And Perform According To Our Fears.

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

There Are Bad People Who Would Be Less Dangerous If They Were Quite Devoid Of Goodness.

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

We Are Inconsolable At Being Deceived By Our Enemies And Being Betrayed By Our Friends, Yet We Are Often Content In Be Being Treated Like That By Our Own Selves.

Marriage Is The Only War In Which You Sleep With The Enemy.

Those Only Are Despicable Who Fear To Be Despised.

Silence Is The Safest Policy If You Are Unsure Of Yourself.

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

We Are Almost Always Wearied In The Company Of Persons With Whom We Are Not Permitted To Be Weary.

Ideas Often Flash Across Our Minds More Complete Than We Could Make Them After Much Labor.

Men's Happiness And Misery Depends Altogether As Much Upon Their Own Humor As It Does Upon Fortune.

If It Requires Great Tact To Speak To The Purpose, It Requires No Less To Know When To Be Silent.

Jealousy Is Nothing More Than A Fear Of Abandonment

The Passions Are The Only Orators Which Always Persuade.

The Contempt Of Riches In The Philosophers Was A Concealed Desire Of Revenging On Fortune The Injustice Done To Their Merit, By Despising The Good She Denied Them.

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

Perfect Behavior Is Born Of Complete Indifference.

Avarice Misapprehends Itself Almost Always. There Is No Passion Which More Often Will Miss Its Aim, Nor Upon Which The Present Has So Much Influence To The Prejudice Of The Future.

We May Sooner Be Brought To Love Them That Hate Us, Than Them That Love Us More Than We Would Have Them Do.

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.

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.

Silence Is The Best Tactic For He Who Distrusts Himself.

Time's Chariot-wheels Make Their Carriage-road In The Fairest Face.

The Esteem Of Good Men Is The Reward Of Our Worth, But The Reputation Of The World In General Is The Gift Of Our Fate.

Men Are Often So Foolish As To Boast And Value Themselves Upon Their Passions, Even Those That Are Most Vicious. But Envy Is A Passion So Full Of Cowardice And Shame That No One Every Ever Had The Confidence To Own It.

The Intellect Is Always Fooled By The Heart.

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.

Idleness And Constancy Fix The Mind To What It Finds Easy And Agreeable. This Habit Always Confines And Cramps Up Our Knowledge; And No One Has Ever Taken The Trouble To Stretch And Carry His Understanding As Far As It Could Go.

Even Women Are Perfect At The Outset.

Our Self-love Can Less Bear To Have Our Tastes Than Our Opinions Condemned.

We Often Pride Ourselves On Even The Most Criminal Passions, But Envy Is A Timid And Shamefaced Passion We Never Dare To Acknowledge.

Nothing Is Rarer Than Real Goodness.

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

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.

Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

Our Actions Are Like The Terminations Of Verses, Which We Rhyme As We Please.

Boredom ... Causes Us To Neglect More Duties Than Does Interest.

Our Aversion To Lying Is Commonly A Secret Ambition To Make What We Say Considerable, And Have Every Word Received With A Religious Respect.

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

We Often Are Consoled By Our Want Of Reason For Misfortunes That Reason Could Not Have Comforted.

We Do Not Like To Praise, And Seldom Praise Anyone Without Self-interest.

One Thing Which Makes Us Find So Few People Who Appear Reasonable And Agreeable In Conversation Is, That There Is Scarcely Any One Who Does Not Think More Of What He Is About To Say Than Of Answering Precisely What Is Said To Him.

We Rarely Ever Perceive Others As Being Sensible, Except For Those Who Agree With Us.

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

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

It Is As Easy To Unknowingly Deceive Yourself As It Is To Deceive Others.

The Intellect Of The Generality Of Women Serves More To Fortify Their Folly Than Their Reason.

Generally Speaking, We Would Make A Good Bargain By Renouncing All The Good That People Say Of Us, Upon Condition They Would Say No Ill.

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.

We Often Do Shallow Good In Order To Accomplish Evil With Impunity.

In Growing Old, We Become More Foolish - And More Wise.

None But Great Men Are Capable Of Having Great Flaws.

It Is Easier To Be Wise For Others Than For Ourselves.

Fortune Converts Everything To The Advantage Of Her Favorites.

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

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

When Our Hatred Is Violent, It Sinks Us Even Beneath Those We Hate.

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

A Respectable Man May Love Madly, But Not Foolishly.

Perhaps Being Old Is Having Lighted Rooms Inside Your Head, And People In Them, Acting. People You Know, Yet Can't Quite Name.

We Should Only Affect Compassion, And Carefully Avoid Having Any.

The Heart Is Forever Making The Head Its Fool.

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

What Seems To Be Generosity Is Often No More Than Disguised Ambition, Which Overlooks A Small Interest In Order To Secure A Great One.

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

We Should Desire Very Few Things Passionately If We Did But Perfectly Know The Nature Of The Things We Desire.

Chance Corrects Us Of Many Faults That Reason Would Not Know How To Correct.

It Is Easy To Be Wise On Behalf Of Others Than To Be So For Ourselves.

We Would Rather Speak Ill Of Ourselves Than Not Talk About Ourselves At All.

A Readiness To Believe Ill Of Others, Before We Have Duly Examined It, Is The Effect Of Laziness And Pride. We Are Eager To Find Aculprit, And Loath To Give Ourselves The Trouble Of Examining The Crime.

To Establish Oneself In The World, One Does All One Can To Seem Established There Already.

The Clemency Of Princes Is Often But Policy To Win The Affections Of The People.

Moderation Is The Feebleness And Sloth Of The Soul, Whereas Ambition Is The Warmth And Activity Of It.

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

All Who Know Their Own Minds Know Not Their Own Hearts.

One Can Find Women Who Have Never Had One Love Affair, But It Is Rare Indeed To Find Any Who Have Had Only One.

Familiarity Is A Suspension Of Almost All The Laws Of Civility, Which Libertinism Has Introduced Into Society Under The Notion Of Ease.

Absence Abates A Moderate Passion And Intensifies A Great One - As The Wind Blows Out A Candle But Fans Fire Into Flame.

Happiness Is In The Taste, And Not In The Things.

We Love Much Better Those Who Endeavor To Imitate Us, Than Those Who Strive To Equal Us. For Imitation Is A Sign Of Esteem, But Competition Of Envy.

Some Allow Themselves To Be Overcome By Panic, And Others Charge Because They Dare Not Remain At Their Posts. Some May Be Found Whose Courage Is Strengthened By Small Perils That Prepare Them To Face Greater Dangers. Some Are Daring When Facing Swords But Dread Facing Bullets; Others Dread Bullets Little But Fear Facing Swords A Lot.

Whatever Good Things People Say Of Us, They Tell Us Nothing New.

As The Great Ones Of This World Are Unable To Bestow Health Of Body Or Peace Of Mind, We Always Pay Too High A Price For Any Good They Can Do.

That Conduct Often Seems Ridiculous The Secret Reasons Of Which Are Wise And Solid.

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.

However Great The Advantages Given Us By Nature, It Is Not She Alone, But Fortune With Her, Which Makes Heroes.

Women Know Not The Whole Of Their Coquetry.

It's Easier To Know People In General Than One Person In Particular

The Strongest Symptom Of Wisdom In Man Is His Being Sensible Of His Own Follies.

It Is Only Persons Of Firmness That Can Have Real Gentleness. Those Who Appear Gentle Are, In General, Only A Weak Character, Which Easily Changes Into Asperity.

Humility Is Often Merely Feigned Submissiveness Assumed In Order To Subject Others, An Artifice Of Pride Which Stoops To Conquer, And Although Pride Has A Thousand Ways Of Transforming Itself It Is Never So Well Disguised And Able To Take People In As When Masquerading As Humility.

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

One May Outwit Another, But Not All The Others.

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

Some People Are Like Popular Songs That You Only Sing For A Short Time.

To Achieve Greatness One Should Live As If They Will Never Die.

Pride Has A Greater Share Than Goodness In The Reproofs We Give Other People For Their Faults; And We Chide Them Not So Much To Make Them Mend Those Faults As To Make Them Believe That We Ourselves Are Without Fault.

We Are Much Mistaken If We Think That Men Are Always Brave From A Principle Of Valor, Or Women Chaste From A Principle Of Modesty.

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

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.

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.

Wisdom Is The Mind What Health Is To The Body.

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

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

Great Men Should Not Have Great Faults.

The Desire Which Urges Us To Deserve Praise Strengthens Our Good Qualities, And Praise Given To Wit, Valour, And Beauty, Tends To Increase Them.

Gratitude Is A Useless Word. You Will Find It In A Dictionary But Not In Life.

Those Who Most Obstinately Oppose The Most Widely-held Opinions More Often Do So Because Of Pride Than Lack Of Intelligence. They Find The Best Places In The Right Set Already Taken, And They Do Not Want Back Seats.

There Are Follies As Catching As Contagious Disorders.

Considering How Little The Beginning Or The Ceasing To Love Is In Our Own Power, It Is Foolish And Unreasonable For The Lover Or His Mistress To Complain Of One Another's Inconstancy.

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

The Older A Fool Is, The Worse He Is.

He Who Imagines He Can Do Without The World Deceives Himself Much; But He Who Fancies The World Cannot Do Without Him Is Still More 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 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.

Selfishness Is The Grand Moving Principle Of Nine-tenths Of Our Actions.

The Simplest Man With Passion Will Be More Persuasive Than The Most Eloquent Without.

Love's Greatest Miracle Is The Curing Of Coquetry.

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

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 Disguised Falsehoods So Like Truths, That 'twould Be To Judge Ill Not To Be Deceived By Them.

In Friendship As Well As Love, Ignorance Very Often Contributes More To Our Happiness Than Knowledge.

It Is Impossible To Love A Second Time What We Have Really Ceased To Love.

Women's Virtue Is Frequently Nothing But A Regard To Their Own Quiet And A Tenderness For Their Reputation.

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