La Rochefoucauld Love Quotes & Sayings

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

Women find it far more difficult to overcome their inclination to coquetry than to overcome their love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In love deceit almost always outstrips distrust. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Women in love sooner forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As long as we love, we can forgive. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Not to love is in love an infallible means of being loved. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As love increases, prudence diminishes. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We love much better those who endeavor to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For imitation is a sign of esteem, but competition of envy. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly beloved." - Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.] — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are few people who would not be ashamed of being loved when they love no longer. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We pardon to the extent that we love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If one judges love by the majority of its effects, it is more like hatred than like friendship. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A man is sometimes better off deceived about the one he loves, than undeceived. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Envy is destroyed by true friendship, as coquetry by true love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time - unless she happens to take a second. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the soul is to the body which it animates. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Friendship is insipid to those who have experienced love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A gentleman may love like a lunatic, but not like a beast. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A fashionable woman is always in love - with herself. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

324. - There is more self-love than love in jealousy. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love has its name borrowed by a great number of dealings and affairs that are attributed to it
in which it has no greater part than the Doge in what is done at Venice. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires ... — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What men have given the name of friendship to is nothing but an alliance, a reciprocal accommodation of interest, an exchange of good offices; in it is nothing but a system of traffic, in which self-love always proposes to itself some advantage. — Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Most frequently we make confidants from vanity, a love of talking, a wish to win the confidence of others, and to make an exchange of secrets. — Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

321. - We are nearer loving those who hate us, than those who love us more than we desire. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don't know ten souls who read him without a middleman. — Dorothy Parker

The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The pleasure of love is in loving. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

78. - The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Most women lament not the death of their lovers so much out of real affection for them, as because they would appear worthy of love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The more we love, the nearer we are to hate. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Young women that would not be thought coquettish, and old men that would not be ridiculous, should never talk of love, as if they had any concern in it. — Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Love of fame, fear of disgrace, schemes for advancement, desire to make life comfortable and pleasant, and the urge to humiliate others are often at the root of the valour men hold in such high esteem. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In their early passions women are in love with the lover, later they are in love with love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The reason why lovers and their mistresses never tire of being together is that they are always talking of themselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

It is with true love as with ghosts. Every one talks of it but few have seen it. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We pardon as long as we love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Absense diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is easier to fall in love when you are out of it than to get out of it when you are in. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The reason why most women have so little sense of friendship is that this is but a cold and flat passion to those that have felt that of love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are people who would never have been in love, had they never heard love spoken of. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved
sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest
so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld