1,221 Quotes by François de La Rochefoucauld

We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.

Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

Women in love sooner forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities.

When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.

Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.