Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

La Rochefoucauld isn’t offering a Hallmark-grade observation about friendship; he’s staging a quiet ambush. The line flatters our self-image for a beat (we comfort friends because we care) and then twists the blade: we may be “comforted” by their pain because it hands us a socially approved role to play. Misfortune becomes a theater where we can perform tenderness, earn moral credit, and feel indispensable, all while telling ourselves we’re being purely altruistic.

The verb choice does the real work. We are “comforted” not by our friends’ recovery, but by their misfortune itself, specifically when it provides “occasion.” That word makes empathy sound like an event invitation. Affection and “solicitude” turn into instruments of self-soothing: we get to speak the right lines, send the right note, show up at the right time, and experience ourselves as good. La Rochefoucauld’s target is less cruelty than the ego’s talent for laundering self-interest through virtue.

Context matters: writing in the salons and courts of 17th-century France, he watched reputation function like currency. Public displays of feeling were not just intimate acts but social signals, proof of refinement and loyalty. In that world, consolation can be a subtle form of dominance: your friend’s vulnerability elevates you into the position of the steady one, the wise one, the generous one.

The sting is modern because the mechanism persists. Grief posts, supportive texts, performative concern at work - misfortune still creates opportunities to be seen being kind. La Rochefoucauld doesn’t deny affection; he warns how quickly it becomes self-congratulation.