“The extreme pleasure we take in talking about ourselves should make us afraid that we may scarcely be giving any to our listeners.”

—  François de La Rochefoucauld, book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

L’extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n’en donner guere à ceux qui nous écoutent.
Translation by E.H. Blackmore et. al., in Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, de La Rochefoucauld, Oxford University Press (2008) : ISBN 019162313X
Maxim 314
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 22, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The extreme pleasure we take in talking about ourselves should make us afraid that we may scarcely be giving any to our…" by François de La Rochefoucauld?
François de La Rochefoucauld photo
François de La Rochefoucauld156
French author of maxims and memoirs 1613–1680

Related quotes

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden photo

“I am extremely unwilling that we should take upon ourselves to exercise a jurisdiction which the law does not vest in us.”

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden (1762–1832) British barrister and judge, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench

Rex v. Middleton (1819), 1 Chit. Rep. 656.

David Cameron photo

“As we talk about the threat of extremism and the challenge of integration, we should not do our country down – we are, without a shadow of doubt, a beacon to the world.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Peter Hitchens photo

“We cannot just give [our country] to complete strangers on an impulse because it makes us feel good about ourselves.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2015-09-06
PETER HITCHENS: We won't save refugees by destroying our own country
Mail on Sunday
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3223828/PETER-HITCHENS-won-t-save-refugees-destroying-country.html

“The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.”

Ted Sizer (1932–2009) American education reformer

Source: Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984), p. 95.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

Menotti Lerro photo

“We should never be afraid of our dreams, but only of who doesn’t want to make us dream.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Dario, Act III, scene iV.
Theater Quotes

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge photo

“This, then, is the obedience of faith, whereunto the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, that we should not give ear to the doctrine taught by the world, which is a doctrine of self-righteousness, and that we should keep ourselves altogether “unspotted from the world,” in our daily walk and conversation, and that we join not with the world in any thing that denies God and Christ, be it what it may.”

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–1874) Dutch minister

Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 11 (quote from James 1:27)

“We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.”

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 85

“No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves”

Hugh Prather (1938–2010) American writer

Source: I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me

“The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves makes us who we are.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

Related topics