A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), a French nobleman shaped by court life, civil conflict (the Fronde), and the moral scrutiny of Parisian salons, is best known for his terse, skeptical maxims about human motives. This remark belongs to that tradition: an observation distilled from the social world of the seventeenth-century aristocracy, where alliances and “friendships” were often entangled with ambition, reputation, and self-interest. Against that backdrop, the maxim contrasts the immense value of genuine friendship with the paradoxical negligence people show in cultivating it—suggesting that what is rarest and most sustaining is often least deliberately pursued.

The maxim argues that authentic friendship is among life’s highest goods, yet people invest surprisingly little effort in earning or sustaining it. La Rochefoucauld’s edge lies in the implied critique: we are diligent in acquiring visible advantages—status, wealth, influence—while treating friendship as something that should simply happen, or as a convenience rather than a practice. The line also hints at rarity: “true” friends are not plentiful, and they require discernment, time, and moral attention to recognize and keep. In a broader sense, it urges a reordering of priorities—valuing character and mutual loyalty over the transactional relationships that dominate social life.