Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A savage little needle of a sentence: the kind that pricks hardest because it’s aimed at the people applauding themselves. La Rochefoucauld’s punchline is that society doesn’t merely tolerate vice; it recruits it. “Serviceable” is the operative word. He’s not talking about glamorous depravity or private sins that ruin careers. He means the socially useful vices that lubricate hierarchies: ambition that keeps institutions humming, vanity that fuels display and patronage, hypocrisy that maintains a respectable facade, even cruelty dressed up as “discipline” or “realism.” These are defects that pay dividends, so we call them virtues or, at least, “qualities.”

The subtext is colder than moral outrage. It’s an anatomy lesson. Value in society is not a reward for goodness; it’s often a market price for utility. If a man’s vices make him predictable, productive, loyal to the pecking order, or good at enforcing it, he becomes “recommended” without needing actual merit. La Rochefoucauld’s own context matters: a court culture where reputation was currency, flattery was survival, and high-minded ideals routinely served as costumes for self-interest. His maxims are basically field notes from a world where sincerity is expensive and appearances are strategic.

The intent isn’t to demand purer behavior; it’s to puncture our comforting story that status tracks virtue. The insult lands because it implicates the whole audience: we’re the ones doing the valuing, mistaking someone’s convenient damage for character.