Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Moral purity is not what La Rochefoucauld is selling; it is what he is puncturing. The line draws a cold, elegant distinction: vice is tolerable, even expected, because it reads as human appetite and recognizable self-interest. What’s unforgivable is the person who manages to be spotless and still contemptible - the one with “no virtue,” meaning no redeeming generosity, courage, loyalty, or mercy to counterbalance their flaws. In his world, sin can be an honest confession; virtue is the only real social currency.

The subtext is aristocratic and surgical. Writing amid the salons and intrigues of 17th-century France, La Rochefoucauld watched reputations get manufactured through manners, piety, and strategic restraint. “No vice” can be a performance: a polished exterior that signals timidity, calculation, or the obsessive desire to appear correct. He’s warning that the absence of visible vice doesn’t equal goodness; it can mean bloodless self-preservation. Vice at least implies heat, risk, a life being lived. Virtue implies restraint put to a purpose - the capacity to act for something beyond oneself.

The intent is also socially diagnostic. He’s giving his readers permission to distrust the sanctimonious and to forgive the flawed, because vice is common but virtue is rare. It’s a maxim designed to disarm moral posturing: better the sinner with a pulse than the impeccably behaved person who offers nothing worth admiring.