"We had better appear what we are, than affect to appear what we are not."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 20 of 55)
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"There are heroes in evil as well as in good."
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"Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design."
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"The moderation of fortunate people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their tempers."
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"We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so."
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"Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue."
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"To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him."
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"Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us."
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"Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns."
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"What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange."
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"People would not long remain in social life if they were not the dupes of each other."
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"Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly."
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"There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of."
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"Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it."
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"High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light."
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"It is not enough that we should succeed, but our friends must fail as well."
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"A wise man should order his interests, and set them all in their proper places. This order is often troubled by greed, which putsus upon pursuing so many things at once that, in eagerness for matters of less consideration, we grasp at trifles, and let go things of greater value."
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"The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today."
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"Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts"
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"The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live."
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