Francois De La Rochefoucauld
136 quotations
We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
Few people know how to be old.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.
To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
We would rather speak badly of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.
Our enemies approach nearer to truth in their judgments of us than we do ourselves.
The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.
Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.
There is hardly a man clever enough to recognize the full extent of the evil he does.
We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity.
No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.
It is for want of application, rather than of means that people fail,
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it.
We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.
Only the great can afford to have great defects.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.