"Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles."
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Quote collection
Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 55 of 55)
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"Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness."
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"We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive."
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"What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind."
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"Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear."
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"Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation."
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"Our distrust of another justifies his deceit."
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"The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities."
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"If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill."
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"There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners."
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"The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them."
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"Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous."
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"We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means."
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"A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing."
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"We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive."
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"The qualities we have do not make us so ridiculous as those which we affect to have. [Fr., On n'est jamais si ridicule par les qualites que l'on a que par celles que l'on affecte d'avoir.]"
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