Life & Wisdom Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Generosity, La Rochefoucauld implies, is less halo than mirror: the giver is often admiring their own reflection. The line lands because it refuses the comforting script where charity is pure and selfless, swapping it for a colder, sharper psychology. He doesn’t argue that giving is fake; he argues that the motive is frequently misfiled. What looks like virtue is, on inspection, a performance with a payoff: status, moral glow, the quiet thrill of being seen as magnanimous.

The craft is in the phrasing. “What is called” signals a social consensus he’s about to puncture; he’s attacking the label as much as the act. “Usually” keeps him from sounding absolute, which makes the cynicism more credible. Then the kicker: “we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.” The comparison isn’t between giving and receiving, but between two pleasures inside the giver: the internal reward of self-approval versus the external object handed over. The gift becomes a prop; the real consumption is of one’s own virtue.

Context matters: this is a salon-era moralist writing for an aristocratic world built on reputation, patronage, and carefully staged honor. Public generosity functioned as social currency, a way to purchase loyalty and admiration without calling it a transaction. La Rochefoucauld’s intent isn’t to abolish kindness so much as to expose its hidden economics. The subtext is modern, too: philanthropy as branding, “good deeds” as content, morality as a platform. He’s warning that the cleanest-looking gestures can still be driven by the grubby human need to matter.