Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Politeness, La Rochefoucauld implies, is just vanity with better table manners. “A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice” skewers the performance of modesty by treating it not as humility but as strategy: the coy recoil that invites a second, warmer insistence. The line works because it compresses an entire social choreography into a single mechanism. Compliment. Demur. Reassure. Escalate. Everyone gets to feel virtuous; everyone gets to feel seen.

The intent is diagnostic, not merely cynical. La Rochefoucauld, a master anatomist of self-interest, writes from a 17th-century aristocratic world where reputation is currency and speech is combat disguised as etiquette. At court, you rarely say what you mean; you say what will land. Modesty becomes a form of dominance: by refusing the first praise, the recipient controls the exchange, forcing the admirer to pay again, publicly, with interest. The refusal also signals refinement - only the unsophisticated accept credit too quickly.

Subtextually, he’s warning that even our “good” gestures can be hungry. The aphorism doesn’t claim no one is ever sincere; it claims sincerity is often braided with appetite. That braid is why the sentence still stings. Modern culture calls it “humblebragging,” but La Rochefoucauld spots the older, quieter version: not the boast, but the blush. The brilliance is its insinuation that the self is rarely absent from self-effacement - it just changes costumes.