Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Reproaching timidity is one of those moral gestures that flatters the reproacher and cripples the person being “helped.” La Rochefoucauld, the great anatomist of self-interest dressed up as virtue, is pointing to a social paradox: the timid aren’t corrected by confrontation because confrontation is precisely what they’re built to avoid. Scold them for shrinking back and you hand them fresh evidence that engagement equals danger. The result is not courage but deeper retreat, now laced with shame.

The line works because it treats “fault” as a practical problem, not a sin. Timidity may be undesirable, but the method of correction matters more than the diagnosis. There’s an implied critique of performative frankness - the kind of blunt “truth-telling” that serves the speaker’s appetite for authority while claiming it serves the other person’s growth. In that sense, the aphorism is less about psychology than about power: who gets to name a weakness, and what they gain by doing it.

Context sharpens the edge. Writing in a courtly world where reputation was currency and survival depended on reading rooms like battlefields, La Rochefoucauld understood that people rarely change because they’re lectured; they change because incentives and safety shift. “Dangerous” isn’t melodrama. It suggests that correcting timidity can backfire socially (you lose the person, the alliance, the confidant) and strategically (you create a quieter, more resistant opponent). The subtext: if you want bravery, don’t punish fear. Create conditions where it stops being rational.