- Alex Vikner
Maxims
Author: François de La Rochefoucauld
Summary: La Rochefoucauld's maxims reflect on the conduct and motives of mankind and encapsulate uncomfortable and everlasting truths about the human condition.
[20]
The steadfastness of the wise is but the art of keeping their agitation locked in their hearts.
[31]
If we had no faults we should not find so much enjoyment in seeing faults in others.
[38]
Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.
[47]
Our temperament decides the value of everything the fortune bestows upon us.
[56]
In order to succeed in the world people do their utmost to appear successful.
[64]
Truth does not do as much good in the world as the semblance of truth does evil.
[78]
In most men love of justice is only fear of suffering injustice.
[79]
Silence is the safest policy if you are unsure of yourself.
[106]
To be known well things must be known in detail, but. as detail is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
[132]
It is easier to be wise for others than for oneself.
[147]
Few people are wise enough to prefer useful criticism to the sort of praise which is their undoing.
[157]
The glory of great men must always be measured against the means they have used to acquire it.
[169]
We are held to our duty by laziness and timidity, but often virtue gets all the audit.
[199]
Desire to appear clever often prevents our becoming so.
[216]
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses what one would be capable of doing before the world at large.
[237]
Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.
[244]
Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things.
[250]
True eloquence consists in saying that all that is required and only what is required.
[286]
It is impossible to love for a second time anything you have really ceased to love.
[312]
The reason why lovers never tire of each other's company is that the conversation is always about themselves.
[327]
We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.
[343]
To achieve greatness a man must know how to turn all his chances to good account.
[352]
We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.
[375]
Commonplace minds usually condemn whatever is beyond their powers.
[386]
No people are more often wrong than those who cannot bear to be.
[389]
What makes the vanity of others intolerable is that it hurts our own.
[410]
The most difficult undertaking in friendship is not showing our faults to our friend, but making him see his own.
[428]
We freely forgive in our friends those faults which do not affect us.
[435]
Chance and caprice rule the world.
[442]
We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.
[451]
No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.
[457]
It would pay us better to let ourselves be seen as we are than to try to appear what we are not.
[463]
There is often more pride than kindness in our pity for the misfortunes of our enemies, for we make a display of sympathy in order to impress them with our superiority.
[487]
We are lazier in mind than in body.
[496]
Quarrels would not last long if the fault were on one side only.
[515]
Hope and fear are inseparable, and there is no fear without hope nor hope without fear.
[516]
We should not take offence when people hide the truth from us, since so often we hide it from ourselves.
[526]
We are quick to criticise the faults of others, but slow to use those faults to correct our own.
[528]
The good and bad things that happen to us touch our emotions not in proportion to their importance but to our sensitivity.
[532]
Extreme boredom provides its own antidote.
[533]
Most things are praised or decried because it is fashionable to praise or decry them.
[552]
A good woman is a hidden treasure: the finder is well advised not to boast about it.
[555]
Almost always we are bored by people to. whom we ourselves are boring.
[561]
A man who dislikes everybody is much more unhappy than a man nobody likes.