Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

Just because I don't do bad things doesn't mean I don't have bad thoughts.

Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

I see and praise what is better, but follow what is worse.

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.

One of the important things about temptation is, if I'm going to deal with it I'm going to have to recognize, this is an area of weakness in my life. I have been tempted here before and before and before.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions.

Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

It's easy to point out the evil in other people, but that can be found in all of us. That selfishness, that is something we all have in us. Sometimes you are successful at dealing with it, and sometimes you are not.

What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

People always say be true to yourself. But that’s misleading, because there are two selves. There’s your short term self, and there’s your long term self. And if you’re only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays.

I believe in discipline, so I'm not the right person to cry about weakness and things like this, but maybe I'm not human.

In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.

We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

There is no other way to change something or someone for the better except to occupy it first. The only person you can occupy is yourself. That is why the only person who can change you for the better is you. Without your decision to change and your commitment to change, you will not change.

I've always been strong-minded, but I wonder.