129 Quotes By Francois de La Rochefoucauld


In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on hope

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on imagination

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on jealousy

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on jealousy

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on jealousy

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

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on knowledge

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld on love