Talk:François de La Rochefoucauld

Maxim 474

Il y a peu de femmes dont le mérite dure plus que la beauté.

Few women's merit lasts as long as their beauty.

Doesn't it say lasts longer than their beauty? 203.160.115.248 12:47, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

"There are few women whose worth lasts longer than beauty." —This unsigned comment is by 76.115.131.211 (talk • contribs) .

Adding variants

On this and other pages, substituting what might be more accurate translations for those that have been provided often results in the loss of the most familiar and prevalent forms by which they are quoted. In this case many of the quotations that had been used seem to have been from the 1871 translations of J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell as provided by Project Gutenberg (which currently seems to be having some kind of software malfunction so I won't link to it right now).

I think in all cases that it is preferable to retain quotations of such translations as might have become widely used, even if one is adding variant and more literally correct quotations. ~ Kalki 05:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Translation sources

Since no source is given for any of the translations, it really isn't proper for this article to have a "Sourced" section at all. Presumably the maxims must have been published in translation somewhere in the past 400 years, so it should not be too difficult to check the texts here against a published work in English. 121a0012 06:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Maxim 327

Maxim 327 (Nous n'avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n'en avons pas de grands) is currently translated as "We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones". Shouldn't it be "We confess the little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones". I've also found another translation [1]: "We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones." I don't have a high level of French, but think this is better. Best regards, —surueña 09:18, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to François de La Rochefoucauld. --Antiquary 17:29, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• Aimez le chocolat à fond, sans complexe ni fausse honte, car rappelez-vous: sans un grain de folie, il n’est point d’homme raisonnable.
  • Love chocolate completely, without complexes or false shame; remember, 'there is no reasonable man without a spark of madness.'

• Dans toutes les existences, on note une date où bifurque la destinée, soit vers une catastrophe, soit vers le succès.
  • In all lives, there is a date where destiny forks either towards catastrophe or towards success.

• Il faut tenir à une résolution parce qu'elle est bonne, et non parce qu'on l'a prise.
  • One must be resolute because the resolution is good, not because one has resolved to do it.

• Il n'est jamais plus difficile de bien parler que quand on a honte de se taire.
  • It is never more difficult to speak well than when one is ashamed to be silent.

• Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Quoted in Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends'

"La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: ‘If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.’"

http://dicocitations.lemonde.fr/citations/citation-55464.php

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8610772q/f15.image.r=maximes%20la%20rochefoucauld

'How to Win Friends and Influence People', Dale Carnegie, 1981 Revised edition, p168.

John Brown 87 (talk) 05:31, 1 April 2013 (UTC)