Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.

Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues.

A man given to vice is always an idealist.

Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.

Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

One can acquire some virtues by feigning them for a long time.

Men become old, but they never become good.

He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.

The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.

One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame.

Vice deceives us when dressed in the garb of virtue.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

Every lie has 2 parts - the lie we tell others and the one we tell ourselves to justify it.

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.