"One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines"
About this Quote
Fortune, La Rochefoucauld suggests, is less a verdict than a fever dream we keep revising. The line works because it undercuts two indulgences at once: self-congratulation and self-pity. “Never” is the scalpel. It doesn’t merely caution against misreading events; it frames our emotional accounting as structurally unreliable. We don’t experience luck raw. We stage it, narrate it, inflate it into proof that we’re chosen or cursed.
The subtext is classic La Rochefoucauld: the ego is an untrustworthy clerk. When things go well, we smuggle in merit; when they go badly, we smuggle in cosmic injustice. Either way, imagination becomes a biased accountant, padding the columns to fit the story we want to tell about ourselves. The symmetry of “fortunate” and “unfortunate” is the trapdoor: he’s not offering comfort to the miserable or a slap to the smug; he’s reminding both camps that their certainty is performative.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Writing in 17th-century France, amid court politics where reputations rose and fell on proximity, patronage, and rumor, La Rochefoucauld watched “luck” function as social theater. His moral maxims aren’t inspirational; they’re forensic. In a world where a single royal favor could look like destiny and a single slight could feel like ruin, he insists on the humbling idea that our internal weather overstates the climate.
It’s not stoicism as serenity. It’s stoicism as suspicion: distrust the drama your mind produces, especially when it flatters your importance.
The subtext is classic La Rochefoucauld: the ego is an untrustworthy clerk. When things go well, we smuggle in merit; when they go badly, we smuggle in cosmic injustice. Either way, imagination becomes a biased accountant, padding the columns to fit the story we want to tell about ourselves. The symmetry of “fortunate” and “unfortunate” is the trapdoor: he’s not offering comfort to the miserable or a slap to the smug; he’s reminding both camps that their certainty is performative.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Writing in 17th-century France, amid court politics where reputations rose and fell on proximity, patronage, and rumor, La Rochefoucauld watched “luck” function as social theater. His moral maxims aren’t inspirational; they’re forensic. In a world where a single royal favor could look like destiny and a single slight could feel like ruin, he insists on the humbling idea that our internal weather overstates the climate.
It’s not stoicism as serenity. It’s stoicism as suspicion: distrust the drama your mind produces, especially when it flatters your importance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Maximes (1665), Francois de La Rochefoucauld. Original French maxim: "On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine." Common English rendering: "One is never so fortunate or so unfortunate as one imagines.", |
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