Our minds are lazier than our bodies.

In this aphorism, La Rochefoucauld suggests that intellectual effort is often avoided even more readily than physical exertion. The body may complain, but it can be compelled by necessity or habit; the mind, by contrast, finds subtler ways to evade sustained attention, self-scrutiny, and difficult reasoning. The remark fits his broader moral project of exposing the hidden motives—comfort, vanity, self-interest—that shape human conduct. It also implies a discipline: genuine thought requires deliberate resistance to mental inertia, just as training resists bodily softness. The sting of the line lies in its reversal of a common excuse: we may blame fatigue of the body, but the deeper obstacle is frequently unwillingness to think.