Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld