La Rochefoucauld

American  

[la rawsh-foo-koh] / la rɔʃ fuˈkoʊ /

noun

1. François 6th Duc de, 1613–80, French moralist and composer of epigrams and maxims.

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La Rochefoucauld British  

/ la rɔʃfuko /

noun

1. François (frɑ̃swa), Duc de La Rochefoucauld. 1613–80, French writer. His best-known work is Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (1665), a collection of epigrammatic and cynical observations on human nature

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Example Sentences

The French aphorist François de La Rochefoucauld remarked that “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 9, 2026

He can also be as worldly-wise as La Rochefoucauld: “It is very hard for a man, however modest, to grasp the possibility that a woman who has once loved him may love him no longer.”

From Washington Post • Jul. 31, 2019

Dashing and brave, Robert de La Rochefoucauld was a member of the French Resistance who came from an aristocratic family.

From New York Times • Feb. 8, 2018

You know something sceptical’s afoot when you find Larkin on your bedside table instead of Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld.

From The Guardian • Apr. 22, 2017

I recall the maxim of La Rochefoucauld, “Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.”

From A Foreword to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition by James, Juliet Helena Lumbard