Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Romance, in La Rochefoucauld's hands, is less a candlelit merger of souls than a cleverly disguised duet of egos. The line lands because it punctures the sentimental myth that lovers are sustained by selflessness. Instead, they thrive on the most renewable fuel available: self-interest. Lovers "never weary" each other not because they have discovered some rare harmony, but because each person gets to remain the main character while pretending to be an attentive audience.

The construction is surgical. "The reason" promises a tidy, rational explanation for something usually treated as mysterious. Then comes the twist: "always talking about themselves". It's a deflationary punchline delivered with aristocratic calm, the kind that makes you laugh and wince at the same time. He isn't claiming lovers literally drone on about their biographies; he's pointing at the deeper mechanism of intimacy: courtship as mirrored self-regard, confession as performance, listening as a way of hearing your own importance echoed back.

The subtext is classic La Rochefoucauld: human virtue is often vanity in formal wear. In the salons of 17th-century France, where conversation was both sport and status, love and rhetoric were tightly linked. To be adored was to be interpreted, quoted, reflected. The aphorism also hints at love's durability as a feedback loop: desire is sustained when your inner life is continuously validated, when the beloved becomes an instrument that plays your favorite song - you.

It's cynicism with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer: affectionate, almost, in its insistence that even our tenderness carries an agenda.