Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.

Cleverness is not wisdom.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

Fools are not mad folks.

A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.

Clever people are never credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights!

The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them.

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

People are not stupid.

What a grand thing it is to be clever and have common sense.

Love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

Wise men argue causes; fools decide them.

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

Oh, how fine it is to know a thing or two.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.