Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy, in La Rochefoucauld's hands, isn’t a tragic proof of devotion; it’s a vanity injury dressed up as romance. The line works because it flips the moral alibi jealous people rely on. We say we’re jealous because we care about someone. He suggests we’re jealous because we care about ourselves: our status, our exclusivity, our storyline where we are central and irreplaceable.

The phrasing is coldly surgical. “Contains more” doesn’t deny that jealousy can coexist with love; it demotes love to a minority ingredient. The dominant element is “self-love,” a term that carries the 17th-century edge of amour-propre: the anxious, reputational ego that needs constant confirmation. Jealousy, then, becomes less about the beloved’s happiness and more about the jealous person’s imagined humiliation. It’s not “I want you to be well,” but “I can’t bear being less.”

That’s also the social context doing its work. La Rochefoucauld wrote from inside French court culture, where affection, marriage, and loyalty were tangled with power, optics, and gossip. In that world, being “replaced” isn’t just emotional; it’s political, a demotion in public view. Jealousy is an attempt to control the narrative and to prevent loss of face.

The subtext is bracingly modern: jealousy masquerades as love to make itself look noble. His real target is our talent for self-deception, especially when pride can borrow love’s vocabulary and get away with it.