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Very Few People Are Acquainted With Death. They Undergo It, Commonly, Not So Much Out Of Resolution As Custom And Insensitivity; And Most Men Die Because They Cannot Help It.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Very Few People Are

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Very Few People Are Acquainted With Death. They Undergo It, Commonly, Not So Much Out Of Resolution As Custom And Insensitivity; And Most Men Die Because They Cannot Help It.

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

People Would Never Fall In Love If They Hadn't Heard Love Talked About.

It Is Much Better To Learn To Deal With The Ills We Have Now Than To Speculate On Those That May Befall Us.

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 Easily Forgive Our Friends Those Faults That Do No Affect Us Ourselves.

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

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

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

We Pardon To The Extent That We Love.

Whatever Discoveries We May Have Made In The Regions Of Self-love, There Still Remain Many Unknown Lands.

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

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

Power Over Others

Some Counterfeits Reproduce So Very Well The Truth That It Would Be A Flaw Of Judgment Not To Be Deceived By Them.

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

It Is A Species Of Coquetry To Make A Parade Of Never Practising It.

Our Desires Always Disappoint Us; For Though We Meet With Something That Gives Us Satisfaction, Yet It Never Thoroughly Answers Our Expectation. [however Disappointment Can Always Be Removed If We Remember It Could Have Turned Out Worse.]

Cunning And Treachery Proceed From Want Of Capacity.

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

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

One Kind Of Flirtation Is To Boast We Never Flirt.

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

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

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

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

One May Outwit Another, But Not All The Others.

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

However Glorious An Action In Itself, It Ought Not To Pass For Great If It Be Not The Effect Of Wisdom And Intention.

Good And Bad Fortune Are Found Severally To Visit Those Who Have The Most Of The One Or The Other.

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

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

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

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

It Is More Difficult For A Man To Be Faithful To His Mistress When He Is Favored Than When He Is Ill Treated By Her.

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

Interest Blinds Some People, And Enlightens Others.

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

The Truest Mark Of Being Born With Great Qualities Is To Be Born Without Envy.

The Intellect Is Always Fooled By The Heart.

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

Criticism Sometimes Is Really Praise, And Praise Sometimes Slander.

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

We Often Act Treacherously More From Weakness Than From A Fixed Motive.

Self-love Makes Our Friends Appear More Or Less Deserving In Proportion To The Delight We Take In Them, And The Measures By Whichwe Judge Of Their Worth Depend Upon The Manner Of Their Conversing With Us.

It Is Often Merely For An Excuse That We Say Things Are Impossible.

Positive Thinking

Eloquence: Saying The Proper Thing And Stopping.

Our Envy Always Outlives The Felicity Of Its Object.

We Often Select Envenomed Praise Which, By A Reaction Upon Those We Praise, Shows Faults We Could Not Have Shown By Other Means.

Sometimes We Lose Friends For Whose Loss Our Regret Is Greater Than Our Grief, And Others For Whom Our Grief Is Greater Than Our Regret.

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

Falling In Love

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.

Moderation Cannot Have The Credit Of Combatiug And Subduing Ambition, They Are Never Found Together. Moderation Is The Languor And Indolence Of The Soul, As Ambition Is Its Activity And Ardor.

A Man Seldom Finds People Unthankful, As Long As He Remains In A Condition Of Benefiting Them Further.

Gratitude Is A Lively Sense Of Benefits To Come.

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.

High Fortune Makes Both Our Virtues And Vices Stand Out As Objects That Are Brought Clearly To View By The Light.

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.

We Frequently Do Good In Order To Enable Us To Do Evil Later With Impunity Exemption Of Punishment.

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.

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

The Most Ingenious Men Continually Pretend To Condemn Tricking--but This Is Often Done That They May Use It More Conveniently Themselves, When Some Great Occasion Or Interest Offers Itself To Them.

Vanity, Shame, And Above All Disposition, Often Make Men Brave And Women Chaste.

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

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.

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

Women In Love Sooner Forgive Great Indiscretions Than Small Infidelities.

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

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

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

Nothing Is Given So Profusely As Advice.

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.

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

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

Envy Is More Irreconcilable Than Hatred.

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

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.

Philosophy Triumphs Easily Over Past Evils And Future Evils, But Present Evils Triumph Over It.

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

It Requires Greater Virtues To Support Good Fortune Than Bad.

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

Consolation For Unhappiness Can Often Be Found In A Certain Satisfaction We Get From Looking Unhappy.

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

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

What Keeps Us From Abandoning Ourselves Entirely To One Vice, Often, Is The Fact That We Have Several.

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.

There Are No Accidents So Unlucky From Which Clever People Are Not Able To Reap Some Advantage, And None So Lucky That The Foolish Are Not Able To Turn Them To Their Own Disadvantage.

The Secret Of Pleasing In Conversation Is Not To Explain Too Much Everything; To Say Them Half And Leave A Little For Divination Is A Mark Of The Good Opinion We Have Of Others, And Nothing Flatters Their Self-love More.

Few Things Are Needful To Make The Wise Man Happy, But Nothing Satisfies The Fool; - And This Is The Reason Why So Many Of Mankind Are Miserable.

Men Give Away Nothing So Liberally As Their Advice.

Old Fools Are Greater Fools Than Young Ones.

We Have Not Enough Strength To Follow All Our Reason.

As We Grow Older, We Increase In Folly--and In Wisdom.

We Are Lazier In Our Minds Than In Our Bodies.

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

Perseverance Is Neither Praiseworthy Nor Blameworthy; For It Seems To Be Only The Enduring Of Certain Inclinations And Opinions Which Men Neither Give Themselves Nor Take Away From Themselves.

To Be A Great Man It Is Necessary To Know How To Profit By The Whole Of Our Good Fortune.

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

The Name And Pretense Of Virtue Is As Serviceable To Self-interest As Are Real Vices.

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

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.

Politeness Of The Mind Is To Have Delicate Thoughts

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.

That Man, We May Be Sure, Is A Person Of True Worth, Whom Those Who Envy Him Most Are Yet Forced To Praise.

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

We Had Better Appear What We Are, Than Affect To Appear What We Are Not.

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

There Are Follies As Catching As Contagious Disorders.

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

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.

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

Hatred Is Stronger Than Friendship.

We Are Deceived If We Think That Mind And Judgment Are Two Different Matters: Judgment Is But The Extent Of The Light Of The Mind. This Light Penetrates To The Bottom Of Matters; It Remarks All That Can Be Remarked, And Perceives What Appears Imperceptible. Therefore We Must Agree That It Is The Extent Of The Light In The Mind That Produces All The Effects Which We Attribute To Judgment.

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

We Are More Interested In Making Others Believe We Are Happy Than In Trying To Be Happy Ourselves.

Make Others Happy

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

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

It Is Easier To Appear Worthy Of A Position One Does Not Hold, Than Of The Office Which One Fills.

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

Ridicule Dishonors A Man More Than Dishonor Does.

We Love Everything On Our Own Account; We Even Follow Our Own Taste And Inclination When We Prefer Our Friends To Ourselves; And Yet It Is This Preference Alone That Constitutes True And Perfect Friendship.

We Should Not Judge A Man's Merits By His Great Qualities, But By The Use He Makes Of Them.

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

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

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

Ridicule Dishonours More Than Dishonour.

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

The Reason We Do Not Let Our Friends See The Very Bottom Of Our Hearts Is Not So Much Distrust Of Them As Distrust Of Ourselves.

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.

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.

To Know Oneself Is Not Necessarily To Improve Oneself

Knowing Oneself

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

Listening Well And Answering Well Is One Of The Greatest Perfections That Can Be Obtained In Conversation.

Self-love Is The Greatest Of All Flatterers.

It Is Often Laziness And Timidity That Keep Us Within Our Duty While Virtue Gets All The Credit.

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

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.

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.

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

Man Only Blames Himself In Order That He May Be Praised.

What Renders Other People's Vanity Insufferable Is That It Wounds Our Own.

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

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

It Is Harder To Hide The Feelings We Have Than To Feign The Ones We Do Not Have.

Timidity Is A Fault For Which It Is Dangerous To Reprove Persons Whom We Wish To Correct Of It.

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

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

The Greatest Fault Of A Penetrating Wit Is To Go Beyond The Mark.

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

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.

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

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.

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

We Are Very Far From Always Knowing Our Own Wishes.

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

All Women Are Flirts, But Some Are Restrained By Shyness, And Others By Sense.

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.

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

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

Few Things Are Needed To Make A Wise Man Happy; Nothing Can Make A Fool Content; That Is Why Most Men Are Miserable.

What Makes Us So Bitter Against People Who Outwit Us Is That They Think Themselves Cleverer Than We Are.

There Are No Events So Disastrous That Adroit Men Do Not Draw Some Advantage From Them, Nor Any So Fortunate That The Imprudent Cannot Turn To Their Own Prejudice.

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

Humility Is The Worst Form Of Conceit.

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

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

People That Are Conceited Of Their Own Merit Take Pride In Being Unfortunate, That Themselves And Others May Think Them Considerable Enough To Be The Envy And The Mark Of Fortune.

One Honor Won Is A Surety For More.

There Are Persons Whose Only Merit Consists In Saying And Doing Stupid Things At The Right Time, And Who Ruin All If They Change Their Manners.

There Is No Better Proof Of A Man's Being Truly Good Than His Desiring To Be Constantly Under The Observation Of Good Men.

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

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.

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

In Love Deceit Nearly Always Goes Further Than Mistrust.

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

A Good Woman Is A Hidden Treasure; Who Discovers Her Will Do Well Not To Boast About It.

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.

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

The Generality Of Friends Puts Us Out Of Conceit With Friendship; Just As The Generality Of Religious People Puts Us Out Of Conceit With Religion.

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

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.

History Never Embraces More Than A Small Part Of Reality

We Seldom Praise Anyone In Good Earnest, Except Such As Admire Us.

Conceit Causes More Conversation Than Wit.

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.

We Should Gain More By Letting The World See What We Are Than By Trying To Seem What We Are Not.

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.

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

The Only Security Is Courage.

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

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

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

When We Enlarge Upon The Affection Our Friends Have For Us, This Is Very Often Not So Much Out Of A Sense Of Gratitude As From A Desire To Persuade People Of Our Own Great Worth, That Can Deserve So Much Kindness.

Some Weak People Are So Sensible Of Their Weakness As To Be Able To Make A Good Use Of It.

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.

A Man Often Thinks He Rules Himself, When All The While He Is Ruled And Managed; And While His Understanding Directs One Design, His Affections Imperceptibly Draw Him Into Another.

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

Pity Is Often A Reflection Of Our Own Evils In The Ills Of Others. It Is A Delicate Foresight Of The Troubles Into Which We May Fall.

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

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.

The Hate Of Favourites Is Only A Love Of Favour. The Envy Of Not Possessing It, Consoles And Softens Its Regrets By The Contempt It Evinces For Those Who Possess It, And We Refuse Them Our Homage, Not Being Able To Detract From Them What Attracts That Of The Rest Of The World.

There Are Fine Things That Are More Brilliant When They Are Unfinished Than When Finished Too Much.

Absence Diminishes Mediocre Passions And Increases Great Ones, As The Wind Extinguishes Candles And Fans Fires.

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