The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
Interpretation
Rejecting praise often indicates a deeper desire for affirmation and recognition.
This quote suggests that when someone refuses praise, it may not simply be an act of humility; rather, it could reflect an underlying wish for validation and acknowledgment. The refusal itself can be a way to elicit further praise, highlighting the complex nature of human motivations and the dynamics of social interactions.
In practice
During a speech, someone might quote this to address the nature of humility in leadership.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
My feminism does not demand that a woman have an equal opportunity to torture, alongside men. Torture is no less wrong because a woman, not a man, carries it out.
Our hope is not in the man we put in the White House but in the Man we put on the Cross.
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
What though the sea with waves continuall Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all ; Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought : For whatsoever from one place doth fall Is with the tyde unto another brought : For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.
Character is revealed through action.
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