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There are people who resemble popular songs: they are sung for a time and then forgotten.

[Il y a des gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles, qu’on ne chante qu’un certain temps.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble

Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶211 (1665-1678) [tr. FitzGibbon (1957)]
    (Source)

The manuscripts of some early editions included a clause about those popular songs being distasteful (as seen in some of the translations below), but the phrase was not in the final (1678) edition:

[Il y a des gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles, que tout le monde chante un certain temps, quelques fades et dégoûtants qu’ils soient.]

(Source (French)). Other translations:

There are a sort of people may be compar'd to those trivial Songs, which all are in an humour to sing for a certain time, how flat and distasteful soever they may be.
[tr. Davies (1669), ¶64]

Some Men are like Ballads, that every body Sings at one time or other, though they be never so dull and insipid.
[tr. Stanhope (1694), ¶212]

There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.
[pub. Donaldson (1783), ¶454; ed. Lepoittevin-Lacroix (1797), ¶202]

There are those, who, like new songs, are favourites only for a time.
[ed. Carvill (1835), ¶491]

Some people resemble ballads, which are only sung for a certain time.
[ed. Gowens (1851), ¶220]

There are people who are like farces, which are praised but for a time (however foolish and distasteful they may be).
[tr. Bund/Friswell (1871), ¶211]

Some people are like rag-time -- their popularity is short-lived.
[tr. Heard (1917), ¶216]

Some people are like popular songs, which are sung only for a season.
[tr. Stevens (1939), ¶211]

Some people are like a popular song, taken up only for a time.
[tr. Kronenberger (1959), ¶211]

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.
[tr. Tancock (1959), ¶211]

There are people who resemble certain kinds of popular music, which are sung only for a certain time, however insipid and disgusting they may be, and then forgotten.
[tr. Whichello (2016) ¶211]