1,221 Quotes by François de La Rochefoucauld

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.

Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.

We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.

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

There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

The qualities we have, make us so ridiculous as those which we affect.

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.