Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.

When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.

Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

The heart is forever making the head its fool.

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.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

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.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.

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.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.

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.

People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.