Background Image

...

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.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Truth Is The Foundation

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Self Discipline

It Is Difficult To Like Those Whom We Do Not Esteem; But It Is No Less So To Like Those Whom We Esteem More Than Ourselves.

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

Moderation Is An Ostentatious Proof Of Our Strength Of Character.

We Have More Ability Than Will Power, And It Is Often An Excuse To Ourselves That We Imagine That Things Are Impossible.

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

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.

Men May Boast Of Their Great Actions; But They Are More Often The Effects Of Chance Than Of Design.

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

Our Hopes, Often Though They Deceive Us, Lead Us Pleasantly Along The Path Of Life.

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

Ungrateful People

We Can Be More Clever Than One, But Not More Clever Than All.

Instead Of Considering That The Worst Way To Persuade Or Please Others Is To Try Thus Strongly To Please Ourselves, And That To Listen Well And To Answer Well Are Some Of The Greatest Charms We Can Have In Conversation.

He Is Not To Pass For A Man Of Reason Who Stumbles Upon Reason By Chance But He Who Knows It And Can Judge It And Has A True Taste For It.

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.

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

Some Reproaches Praise; Some Praises Reproach.

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

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.

Constancy In Love Is Of Two Sorts: One Is The Effect Of New Excellencies That Are Always Presenting Themselves Afresh, And Attractour Affections Continually; The Other Is Only From A Point Of Honor, And A Taking Of Pride Not To Change.

The First Lover Is Kept A Long While, When No Offer Is Made Of A Second.

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

Politeness Of The Mind Is To Have Delicate Thoughts

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Most Brilliant Fortunes Are Often Not Worth The Littleness Required To Gain Them.

Generosity Is The Vanity Of Giving.

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

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.

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

Were We Not Proud Ourselves, We Should Not Complain Of The Pride Of Others.

There Is Great Skill In Knowing How To Conceal One's Skill.

The Height Of Ability In The Least Able Consists In Knowing How To Submit To The Good Leadership Of Others.

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

In Great Affairs We Ought To Apply Ourselves Less To Creating Chances Than To Profiting From Those That Offer.

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

Lovers, When They Are No Longer In Love, Find It Very Hard To Break Up.

Plenty Of People Want To Be Pious, But No One Yearns To Be Humble.

Of All Our Faults, The One That We Excuse Most Easily Is Idleness.

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

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

Fortune And Humor Govern The World.

We Are Very Far From Always Knowing Our Own Wishes.

Some People Displease With Merit, And Others' Very Faults And Defects Are Pleasing.

None But Great Men Are Capable Of Having Great Flaws.

Being A Blockhead Is Sometimes The Best Security Against Being Cheated By A Man Of Wit.

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.

A Man's Happiness Or Unhappiness Depends As Much On His Temperament As On His Destiny.

Love Can No More Continue Without A Constant Motion Than Fire Can; And When Once You Take Hope And Fear Away, You Take From It Its Very Life And Being.

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.

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

There Is Nothing Men Are So Generous Of As Advice.

When The Philosophers Despised Riches, It Was Because They Had A Mind To Vindicate Their Own Merit, And Take Revenge Upon The Injustice Of Fortune By Vilifying Those Enjoyments Which She Had Not Given Them.

There Is Only One Kind Of Love, But There Are A Thousand Imitations.

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.

Everyone Praises His Heart, None Dare Praise Their Understanding.

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

A Man Would Rather Say Evil Of Himself Than Say Nothing.

Men Sometimes Think They Hate Flattery, But They Hate Only The Manner Of Flattering.

Our Enemies Come Nearer The Truth In The Opinions They Form Of Us Than We Do In Our Opinion Of Ourselves.

Some People Resemble Ballads Which Are Only Sung For A Certain Time.

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

Clemency, Which We Make A Virtue Of, Proceeds Sometimes From Vanity, Sometimes From Indolence, Often From Fear, And Almost Always From A Mixture Of All Three.

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

We Are Much Harder On People Who Betray Us In Small Ways Than On People Who Betray Others In Great Ones.

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.

Great Names Abase, Instead Of Elevating, Those Who Do Not Know How To Bear Them.

In Love Deceit Almost Always Outstrips Distrust.

What Is Perfectly True Is Perfectly Witty.

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

Gratitude Is A Lively Sense Of Benefits To Come.

We Pardon To The Extent That We Love.

Constancy In Love ... Is Only Inconstancy Confined To One Object.

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

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

It Is Difficult To Define Love; All We Can Say Is, That In The Soul It Is A Desire To Rule, In The Mind It Is A Sympathy, And In The Body It Is A Hidden And Delicate Wish To Possess What We Love-plus Many Mysteries.

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

In The Misfortunes Of Our Best Friends We Always Find Something Not Altogether Displeasing To Us.

It Is The Habit Of Mediocre Minds To Condemn All That Is Beyond Their Grasp.

As Great Minds Have The Faculty Of Saying A Great Deal In A Few Words, So Lesser Minds Have A Talent Of Talking Much, And Saying Nothing.

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.

There Are Two Sorts Of Constancy In Love One Arises From Continually Discovering In The Loved Person New Subjects For Love, The Other Arises From Our Making A Merit Of Being Constant.

Humility Is Often A False Front We Employ To Gain Power Over Others.

Power Over Others

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

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.

We Seldom Find People Ungrateful So Long As It Is Thought We Can Serve Them.

Ungrateful People

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

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

Self-love Is The Love Of A Man's Own Self, And Of Everything Else For His Own Sake. It Makes People Idolaters To Themselves, And Tyrants To All The World Besides.

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

Wisdom Is The Mind What Health Is To The Body.

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

Flattery Is A Kind Of Bad Money, To Which Our Vanity Gives Us Currency.

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

That Good Disposition Which Boasts Of Being Most Tender Is Often Stifled By The Least Urging Of Self-interest.

In Love We Often Doubt What We Most Believe.

To Establish Ourselves In The World, We Have To Do All We Can To Appear Established. To Succeed In The World, We Do Everything We Can To Appear Successful.

Flattery Is A Counterfeit Money Which, But For Vanity, Would Have No Circulation.

Decency Is The Least Of All Laws, But Yet It Is The Law Which Is Most Strictly Observed.

The Desire Of Appearing Clever Often Prevents Our Becoming So.

None But The Contemptible Are Apprehensive Of Contempt.

It May Be Said That The Vices Await Us In The Journey Of Life Like Hosts With Whom We Must Successively Lodge; And I Doubt Whether Experience Would Make Us Avoid Them If We Were To Travel The Same Road A Second Time.

Most Women Lament Not The Death Of Their Lovers So Much Out Of Real Affection For Them, As Because They Would Appear Worthy Of Love.

Most People Judge Men By Their Success Or Their Good Fortune.

Those Whom The World Has Delighted To Honor Have Oftener Been Influenced In Their Doings By Ambition And Vanity Than By Patriotism.

A Respectable Man May Love Madly, But Not Foolishly.

Few Know How To Be Old.

One Man May Be More Cunning Than Another, But No One Can Be More Cunning Than All The World.

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

In Friendship, As In Love, We Are Often More Happy From The Things We Are Ignorant Of Than From Those We Are Acquainted With.

When Our Hatred Is Too Alive Puts Us Below What We Hate.

It Is Great Folly To Wish To Be Wise All Alone.

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

The Good Or The Bad Fortune Of Men Depends Not Less Upon Their Own Dispositions Than Upon Fortune.

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

When A Man Is In Love, He Doubts, Very Often, What He Most Firmly Believes.

The Old Begin To Complain Of The Conduct Of The Young When They Themselves Are No Longer Able To Set A Bad Example.

The Accent Of A Man's Native Country Remains In His Mind And His Heart, As It Does In His Speech.

As Love Increases, Prudence Diminishes.

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

A Man Cannot Please Long Who Has Only One Kind Of Wit.

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

The Shame That Arises From Praise Which We Do Not Deserve Often Makes Us Do Things We Should Otherwise Never Have Attempted.

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

Every One Speaks Well Of His Own Heart, But No One Dares Speak Well Of His Own Mind.

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

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

There Are Some Good Marriages, But Practically No Delightful Ones.

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

For Most Men The Love Of Justice Is Only The Fear Of Suffering Injustice.

We Do Not Wish Ardently For What We Desire Only Through Reason.

It Requires No Small Degree Of Ability To Know When To Conceal One's Ability.

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

When We Disclaim Praise, It Is Only Showing Our Desire To Be Praised A Second Time.

The Constancy Of The Wise Is Only The Talent Of Concealing The Agitation Of Their Hearts.

As It Is The Mark Of Great Minds To Say Many Things In A Few Words, So It Is That Of Little Minds To Use Many Words To Say Nothing.

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.

If We Are Incapable Of Finding Peace In Ourselves, It Is Pointless To Search Elsewhere.

Too Great Cleverness Is But Deceptive Delicacy, True Delicacy Is The Most Substantial Cleverness.

Death And The Sun Are Not To Be Looked At Steadily.

We Always Like Those Who Admire Us.

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

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

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

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

One Honor Won Is A Surety For More.

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.

The Only Thing Constant In Life Is Change

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

Falling In Love

There Is Scarcely Any Man Sufficiently Clever To Appreciate All The Evil He Does.

The World Is Full Of Pots Jeering At Kettles.

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.

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

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

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

The Constancy Of Sages Is Nothing But The Art Of Locking Up Their Agitation In Their Hearts.

The Only Thing That Should Surprise Us Is That There Are Still Some Things That Can Surprise Us.

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

There Are Heroes Of Wickedness, As There Are Of Goodness.

Reconciliation With Our Enemies Is Simply A Desire To Better Our Condition, A Weariness Of War, Or The Fear Of Some Unlucky Thing From Occurring.

It Is Sometimes Necessary To Play The Fool To Avoid Being Deceived By Cunning Men.

On Why I Don't Trust Democracy Without Extremely Powerful Systems Of Accountability And Recall What Seems To Be Generosity Is Often Only Disguised Ambition - Which Despises Small Interests To Gain Great Ones.

We Would Rather See Those To Whom We Do Good, Than Those Who Do Good To Us.

The Height Of Ability Consists In A Thorough Knowledge Of The Real Value Of Things, And Of The Genius Of The Age In Which We Live.

Smallness Of Mind Is The Cause Of Stubbornness, And We Do Not Credit Readily What Is Beyond Our View.

Youth Is A Perpetual Intoxication; It Is A Fever Of The Mind.

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

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.

True Friendship Destroys Envy, And True Love Destroys Coquetterie.

The Surest Way To Be Deceived Is To Consider Oneself Cleverer Than Others.

However Evil Men May Be They Dare Not Be Openly Hostile To Virtue, And So When They Want To Attack It They Pretend To Find It Spurious , Or Impute Crimes To It.

Esteem Never Makes Ingrates.

There May Be Talent Without Position, But There Is No Position Without Some Kind Of Talent.

Behind Many Acts That Are Thought Ridiculous There Lie Wise And Weighty Motives.

We Can Never Be Certain Of Our Courage Until We Have Faced Danger.

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

There Are Certain People Fated To Be Fools; They Not Only Commit Follies By Choice, But Are Even Constrained To Do So By Fortune.

Only Great Men Have Great Faults.

Small Minds Are Much Distressed By Little Things. Great Minds See Them All But Are Not Upset By Them.

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

We Take Less Pains To Be Happy, Than To Appear So.

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

It Is A Great Act Of Cleverness To Be Able To Conceal One's Being Clever.

Every One Complains Of A Poor Memory, No One Of A Weak Judgment.

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

Everyone Complains Of His Memory, And Nobody Complains Of His Judgment.

We Often Boast That We Are Never Bored; But Yet We Are So Conceited That We Do Not Perceive How Often We Bore Others.

When You Plant A Seed Of Love, It Is You That Blossoms. Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati The 11 Karmic Spaces: Choosing Freedom From The Patterns That Bind You There Are Two Kinds Of Faithfulness In Love: One Is Based On Forever Finding New Things To Love In The Loved One; The Other Is Based On Our Pride In Being Faithful.

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

Weakness Is The Only Fault That Is Incorrigible.

Of All The Violent Passions, The One That Becomes A Woman Best Is Love.

For Envy, Like Lightning, Generally Strikes At The Top Or Any Point Which Sticks Out From The Ordinary Level. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Our Envy Always Outlives The Felicity Of Its Object.

We Sometimes Think That We Hate Flattery, But We Only Hate The Manner In Which It Is Done. [fr., On Croit Quelquefoir Hair La Flatterie; Maid On Ne Hait Que A Maniere De Flatter.]

Our Concern For The Loss Of Our Friends Is Not Always From A Sense Of Their Worth, But Rather Of Our Own Need Of Them And That We Have Lost Some Who Had A Good Opinion Of Us.

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.

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

Trending Author

Category