Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

La Rochefoucauld is warning you off the most seductive form of vanity: believing your insight can safely ride in someone else’s pocket. Framed as prudence about “shares,” the line is really about the social booby trap of counsel. Advice feels generous because it costs the giver little in the moment, but it quietly purchases status - the pleasure of being the person who “knows.” In his moral universe, that pleasure is never clean.

The phrase “most benevolent price” is the knife twist. Even when your motives are pure, the act of pricing your judgment into another person’s fate creates a liability you can’t control. Markets make this obvious: outcomes hinge on timing, luck, and information asymmetry, so a good idea can sour simply because it’s delivered at the wrong moment or received by the wrong temperament. If the trade goes well, you rarely get credit equal to the relief you feel; if it goes badly, you become the villain in a story you didn’t mean to write.

Context matters: La Rochefoucauld wrote from a court culture where reputation functioned like currency and missteps echoed loudly. Financial speculation in 17th-century France was becoming a modern anxiety, but the deeper target is eternal: relationships strained by “help.” His maxim anticipates today’s influencer-finance ecosystem, where the performance of expertise travels faster than responsibility. The subtext is almost cynical: your advice doesn’t just risk their money; it risks your moral standing, because people don’t remember probabilities - they remember who to blame.