Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes About Virtue
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Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.
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What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.
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It requires greater virtues to support good fortune than bad.
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There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.
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It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
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Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.
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The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.
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Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
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However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.
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Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.
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Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.
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Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.
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The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
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The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.
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When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
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There are certain defects which, well-mounted, glitter like virtue itself.
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Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
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Virtue is to the soul what health is tot he body.
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It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
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The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
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If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.
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High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light.
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Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.
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What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
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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.
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Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune.
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Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
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Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
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For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.
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It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- Born: September 15, 1613
- Died: March 17, 1680
- Occupation: Author