1,221 Quotes by François de La Rochefoucauld

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 enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.

As love increases, prudence diminishes.

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 man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.

Numberless arts appear foolish whose secret motives are most wise and weighty.

No one thinks fortune so blind as those she has been least kind to.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

Cunning and treachery proceed from want of capacity.