Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Men are virtuous because women are; women are virtuous from necessity.

Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.)

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

It is easy to be virtuous in prospective.

So many people say, "I'm a good person!" Like, why are you a good person? To be a good person you have to actively be good.

To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.

To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.

I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.

Oh, 'tis not my qualities they object to! 'Tis my lack of vice.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

You're fortunate when you can afford to be virtuous.

The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this.

An honest man is strange when he is among dishonest men, but it is a good kind of strangeness.

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.