Sovereign Maxims
Context: It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life. (5)
“Who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks.”
Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.
Maxim 209.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Original
Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.
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François de La Rochefoucauld 156
French author of maxims and memoirs 1613–1680Related quotes
“Woever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don’t you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense.”
Quicumque ille fuit, puerum qui pinxit Amorem
nonne putas miras hunc habuisse manus?
is primum vidit sine sensu vivere amantes
II, xii, 1-3; translation by A. S. Kline
Elegies
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Misattributed
“The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.”
Sapiens vivit quantum debet, non quantum potest.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXX: On the proper time to slip the cable, Line 4.
“A young woman can live off the folly of men; a man of any age can live off the folly of women.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men
“These could be the best days of our lives / but I don't think we've been living very wise.”
Digsy's Dinner
Definitely Maybe (1994)
“For if he like a madman lived,
At least he like a wise one died.”
Don Quixote's epitaph
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV