Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillacla ʁɔʃfuˈko]; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it. Born in Paris on the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-century...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth15 September 1613
CountryFrance
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
In their early passions women are in love with the lover, later they are in love with love.
Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever
The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.
Some men are so full of themselves that when they fall in love, they amuse themselves rather with their own passion than with theperson they love.
Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.
The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.