1,221 Quotes by François de La Rochefoucauld

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.

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.

The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.

If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are; we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.

If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.

It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.

None but great men are capable of having great flaws.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.