A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims

F >> Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld >> Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims




4.--Self love is more cunning than the most cunning
man in the world.

5.--The duration of our passions is no more de-
pendant upon us than the duration of our life.
[Then what becomes of free will?--AIMÉ MARTIN]

6.--Passion often renders the most clever man a
fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man
clever.

7.--Great and striking actions which dazzle the
eyes are represented by politicians as the effect of
great designs, instead of which they are commonly
caused by the temper and the passions. Thus the war
between Augustus and Anthony, which is set down to
the ambition they entertained of making themselves
masters of the world, was probably but an effect of
jealousy.

8.--The passions are the only advocates which
always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules
of which are infallible; and the simplest man with
passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent
without.

[See Maxim 249 which is an illustration of this.]

9.--The passions possess a certain injustice and
self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them,
and in reality we should distrust them even when
they appear most trustworthy.

10.--In the human heart there is a perpetual gene-
ration of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost
always the foundation of another.

11.--Passions often produce their contraries: ava-
rice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to
avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness
and daring though timidity.

12.--Whatever care we take to conceal our pas-
sions under the appearances of piety and honour, they
are always to be seen through these veils.

[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps
better--“however we may conceal our passions under the
veil, etc., there is always some place where they peep out.”]

13.--Our self love endures more impatiently the
condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

14.--Men are not only prone to forget benefits and
injuries; they even hate those who have obliged them,
and cease to hate those who have injured them. The
necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing
a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling
to submit.

15.--The clemency of Princes is often but policy
to win the affections of the people.

[“So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by
clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame and endear
them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them
to have an opportunity of displaying it.”--Montesquieu,
ESPRIT DES LOIS, LIB. VI., C. 21.]

16.--This clemency of which they make a merit,
arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idle-
ness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all
three combined.

[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which
he lived. Here the clemency spoken of is nothing more
than an expression of the policy of Anne of Austria.
Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the favour
of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she be-
stowed her favours upon those she hated; her friends were
forgotten.--AIMÉ MARTIN. The reader will hereby see
that the age in which the writer lived best interprets his
maxims.]

17.--The moderation of those who are happy arises
from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their
temper.

18.--Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting
the envy and contempt which those merit who are
intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain dis-
play of our strength of mind, and in short the mo-
deration of men at their greatest height is only a
desire to appear greater than their fortune.

19.--We have all sufficient strength to support the
misfortunes of others.

[The strongest example of this is the passage in Lucre-
tius, lib. ii., line I:--
“Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.”]

20.--The constancy of the wise is only the talent of
concealing the agitation of their hearts.

[Thus wisdom is only hypocrisy, says a commentator.
This definition of constancy is a result of maxim 18.]

21.--Those who are condemned to death affect some-
times a constancy and contempt for death which is
only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that
this constancy and contempt are to their mind what
the bandage is to their eyes.

[See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]

22.--Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and
future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

23.--Few people know death, we only endure it,
usually from determination, and even from stupidity
and custom; and most men only die because they
know not how to prevent dying.

24.--When great men permit themselves to be cast
down by the continuance of misfortune, they show
us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not
by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes
are made like other men.

[Both these maxims have been rewritten and made
conciser by the author; the variations are not worth
quoting.]

25.--We need greater virtues to sustain good than
evil fortune.

[“Prosperity do{th} best discover vice, but adversity do{th}
best discover virtue.”--Lord Bacon, ESSAYS{, (1625), “Of
Adversity”}.]

{The quotation wrongly had “does” for “doth”.}

26.--Neither the sun nor death can be looked at
without winking.

27.--People are often vain of their passions, even
of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and
shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

28.--Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable,
as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or
which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand
envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of
others.

29.--The evil that we do does not attract to us so
much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.

30.--We have more strength than will; and it is
often merely for an excuse we say things are impos-
sible.

31.--If we had no faults we should not take so much
pleasure in noting those of others.

32.--Jealousy lives upon doubt; and comes to an
end or becomes a fury as soon as it passes from
doubt to certainty.

33.--Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even
when it casts away vanity.

[See maxim 450, where the author states, what we take
from our other faults we add to our pride.]

34.--If we had no pride we should not complain of
that of others.

[“The proud are ever most provoked by pride.”-Cow-
per, CONVERSATION 160.]

35.--Pride is much the same in all men, the only
difference is the method and manner of showing it.

[“Pride bestowed on all a common friend.”--Pope,
ESSAY ON MAN, Ep. ii., line 273.]

36.--It would seem that nature, which has so wisely
ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has
also given us pride to spare us the mortification of
knowing our imperfections.

37.--Pride has a larger part than goodness in our
remonstrances with those who commit faults, and we
reprove them not so much to correct as to persuade
them that we ourselves are free from faults.

38.--We promise according to our hopes; we per-
form according to our fears.

[“The reason why the Cardinal (Mazarin) deferred so long
to grant the favours he had promised, was because he was
persuaded that hope was much more capable of keeping
men to their duty than gratitude.”--FRAGMENTS HISTORIQUES.
RACINE.]

39.--Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays
all sorts of characters; even that of disinterestedness.

40.--Interest blinds some and makes some see.

41.--Those who apply themselves too closely to
little things often become incapable of great things.

42.--We have not enough strength to follow all our
reason.

43.--A man often believes himself leader when he
is led; as his mind endeavours to reach one goal, his
heart insensibly drags him towards another.


44.--Strength and weakness of mind are mis-named;
they are really only the good or happy arrangement of
our bodily organs.

45.--The caprice of our temper is even more whim-
sical than that of Fortune.

46.--The attachment or indifference which philoso-
phers have shown to life is only the style of their self
love, about which we can no more dispute than of that
of the palate or of the choice of colours.

47.--Our temper sets a price upon every gift that
we receive from fortune.

48.--Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things
themselves; we are happy from possessing what we
like, not from possessing what others like.

49.--We are never so happy or so unhappy as we
suppose.

50.--Those who think they have merit persuade
themselves that they are honoured by being unhappy,
in order to persuade others and themselves that they
are worthy to be the butt of fortune.

[“Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable
men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and
certain it is{, that where} we cannot distinguish ourselves by some-
thing excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some
singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other.”
--Burke, {ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL, (1756), Part I, Sect. XVII}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH
AMERICA. Also, Burke does not actually write “Ambition has been...”,
he writes “It has been...” when speaking of ambition.}

51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfac-
tion which we feel with ourselves as seeing that we
disapprove at one time of that which we approve of
at another.

52.--Whatever difference there appears in our for-
tunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of
good and evil which renders them equal.

53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give,
it is not she alone, but fortune also that makes the
hero.

54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was
only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the
injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of
which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to
guard themselves against the degradation of poverty,
it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinc-
tion which they could not gain by riches.

[“It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior
ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that
pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their
reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of
the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty
and ignorance.”--Gibbon, DECLINE AND FALL, CHAP. 15.]

55.--The hate of favourites is only a love of favour.
The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its
regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who pos-
sess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able
to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of
the world.

56.--To establish ourselves in the world we do
everything to appear as if we were established.

57.--Although men flatter themselves with their
great actions, they are not so often the result of a
great design as of chance.

58.--It would seem that our actions have lucky or
unlucky stars to which they owe a great part of the
blame or praise which is given them.

59.--There are no accidents so unfortunate from
which skilful men will not draw some advantage, nor
so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to
their hurt.

60.--Fortune turns all things to the advantage of
those on whom she smiles.

61.--The happiness or unhappiness of men depends
no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.

[“Still to ourselves in every place consigned
Our own felicity we make or find.”
Goldsmith, TRAVELLER, 431.]

62.--Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in
very few people; what we usually see is only an artful
dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

63.--The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambi-
tion to render our words credible and weighty, and
to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.

64.--Truth does not do as much good in the world,
as its counterfeits do evil.

65.--There is no praise we have not lavished upon
Prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most
trifling event.

[The author corrected this maxim several times, in 1665
it is No. 75; 1666, No. 66; 1671-5, No. 65; in the last
edition it stands as at present. In the first he quotes
Juvenal, Sat. X., line 315.
“ Nullum numen habes si sit Prudentia, nos te;
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus.”
Applying to Prudence what Juvenal does to Fortune, and
with much greater force.]

66.--A clever man ought to so regulate his interests
that each will fall in due order. Our greediness so
often troubles us, making us run after so many things
at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after
the least we miss the greatest.

67.--What grace is to the body good sense is to the
mind.

68.--It is difficult to define love; all we can say is,
that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is
a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and deli-
cate wish to possess what we love--PLUS many
mysteries.

[“Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be
singularly beloved.”--Hobbes{, LEVIATHAN, (1651), Part I,
Chapter VI}.]

{Two notes about this quotation: (1) the translators' mistakenly
have “singularity” for the first “singularly” and (2) Hobbes does
not actually write “Love is the...”--he writes “Love of one...”
under the heading “The passion of Love.”}

69.--If there is a pure love, exempt from the mix-
ture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed
at the bottom of the heart and of which even our-
selves are ignorant.

70.--There is no disguise which can long hide love
where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.

71.--There are few people who would not be
ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer.

72.--If we judge of love by the majority of its
results it rather resembles hatred than friendship.

73.--We may find women who have never indulged
in an intrigue, but it is rare to find those who have
intrigued but once.

[“Yet there are some, they say, who have had {NONE};
But those who have, ne'er end with only {ONE}.”
{--Lord Byron, }DON JUAN, {Canto} iii., stanza 4.]

74.--There is only one sort of love, but there are a
thousand different copies.

75.--Neither love nor fire can subsist without per-
petual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease
to hope, or to fear.

[So Lord Byron{, STANZAS, (1819), stanza 3} says of Love--
“Like chiefs of faction,
His life is action.”]

76.--There is real love just as there are real ghosts;
every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

[“Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art--
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee--
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form as it should be.”
{--Lord Byron, }CHILDE HAROLD, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]

77.--Love lends its name to an infinite number of
engagements (COMMERCES) which are attributed to it,
but with which it has no more concern than the Doge
has with all that is done in Venice.

78.--The love of justice is simply in the majority of
men the fear of suffering injustice.

79.--Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts
himself.

80.--What renders us so changeable in our friend-
ship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the
soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

81.--We can love nothing but what agrees with us,
and we can only follow our taste or our pleasure when
we prefer our friends to ourselves; nevertheless it is
only by that preference that friendship can be true
and perfect.

82.--Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire
to better our condition, a weariness of war, the fear
of some unlucky accident.

[“Thus terminated that famous war of the Fronde. * *
The Duke de la Rochefoucauld desired peace because of
his dangerous wounds and ruined castles, which had made
him dread even worse events. On the other side the
Queen, who had shown herself so ungrateful to her too
ambitious friends, did not cease to feel the bitterness of
their resentment. ‘I wish,’ said she, ‘it were always
night, because daylight shows me so many who have
betrayed me.’”--MEMOIRES DE MADAME DE MOTTEVILLE, TOM.
IV., p. 60. Another proof that although these maxims
are in some cases of universal application, they were based
entirely on the experience of the age in which the author
lived.]

83.--What men term friendship is merely a partner-
ship with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an
exchange of favours--in fact it is but a trade in which
self love always expects to gain something.

84.--It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be
deceived by our friends.

85.--We often persuade ourselves to love people
who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone
produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts
away for the good we wish to do, but for that we ex-
pect to receive.

86.--Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.

87.--Men would not live long in society were they
not the dupes of each other.

[A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, “Which may enter into
the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find
it in a moral treatise.” Yet we have scriptural authority
for it: “Deceiving and being deceived.”--2 TIM. iii. 13.]

88.--Self love increases or diminishes for us the
good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the
satisfaction we feel with them, and we judge of their
merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

89.--Everyone blames his memory, no one blames
his judgment.

90.--In the intercourse of life, we please more by
our faults than by our good qualities.

91.--The largest ambition has the least appearance
of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossi-
bility in compassing its object.

92.--To awaken a man who is deceived as to his
own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done
to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing
that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.

[That is, they cured him. The madman was Thrasyllus,
son of Pythodorus. His brother Crito cured him, when
he infinitely regretted the time of his more pleasant mad-
ness.--See Aelian, VAR. HIST. iv. 25. So Horace--
-------------“Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis,” ait, “cui sic extorta voluptas
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.”
HOR. EP. ii--2, 138,
of the madman who was cured of a pleasant lunacy.]

93.--Old men delight in giving good advice as a
consolation for the fact that they can no longer set
bad examples.

94.--Great names degrade instead of elevating those
who know not how to sustain them.

95.--The test of extraordinary merit is to see those
who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it.

96.--A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less
chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.

97.--We are deceived if we think that mind and
judgment are two different matters: judgment is but
the extent of the light of the mind. This light pene-
trates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that
can be remarked, and perceives what appears imper-
ceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the ex-
tent of the light in the mind that produces all the
effects which we attribute to judgment.

98.--Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise
their understanding.

99.--Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste
and refined thoughts.

100.--Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty
things in an agreeable manner.

101.--Ideas often flash across our minds more com-
plete than we could make them after much labour.

102.--The head is ever the dupe of the heart.

[A feeble imitation of that great thought “All folly
comes from the heart.”--AIMÉ MARTIN. But Bonhome, in his
L'ART DE PENSER, says “Plusieurs diraient en période quarré
que quelques reflexions que fasse l'esprit et quelques resolu-
tions qu'il prenne pour corriger ses travers le premier sen-
timent du coeur renverse tous ses projets. Mais il n'appar-
tient qu'a M. de la Rochefoucauld de dire tout en un mot
que l'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur.”]

103.--Those who know their minds do not neces-
sarily know their hearts.

104.--Men and things have each their proper per-
spective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to
see them near, of others we can never judge rightly
but at a distance.

105.--A man for whom accident discovers sense, is
not a rational being. A man only is so who under-
stands, who distinguishes, who tests it.

106.--To understand matters rightly we should
understand their details, and as that knowledge is
almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial
and imperfect.

107.--One kind of flirtation is to boast we never
flirt.

108.--The head cannot long play the part of the
heart.

109.--Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its
blood, age retains its tastes by habit.

110.--Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

111.--The more we love a woman the more prone
we are to hate her.

112.--The blemishes of the mind, like those of the
face, increase by age.

113.--There may be good but there are no pleasant
marriages.

114.--We are inconsolable at being deceived by our
enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet still we are
often content to be thus served by ourselves.

115.--It is as easy unwittingly to deceive oneself as
to deceive others.

116.--Nothing is less sincere than the way of asking
and giving advice. The person asking seems to pay
deference to the opinion of his friend, while thinking
in reality of making his friend approve his opinion
and be responsible for his conduct. The person
giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him
by eager and disinterested zeal, in doing which he is
usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.

[“I have often thought how ill-natured a maxim it was
which on many occasions I have heard from people of
good understanding, ‘That as to what related to private
conduct no one was ever the better for advice.’ But upon
further examination I have resolved with myself that the
maxim might be admitted without any violent prejudice
to mankind. For in the manner advice was generally given
there was no reason I thought to wonder it should be so
ill received, something there was which strangely inverted
the case, and made the giver to be the only gainer. For
by what I could observe in many occurrences of our lives,
that which we called giving advice was properly taking an
occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense.
On the other side to be instructed or to receive advice on
the terms usually prescribed to us was little better than
tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a
character from our defects.”--Lord Shaftesbury, CHARAC-
TERISTICS, i., 153.]

117.--The most subtle of our acts is to simulate
blindness for snares that we know are set for us. We
are never so easily deceived as when trying to deceive.

118.--The intention of never deceiving often exposes
us to deception.

119.--We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves
to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.

[“Those who quit their proper character{,} to assume what
does not belong to them, are{,} for the greater part{,} ignorant
both of the character they leave{,} and of the character they
assume.”--Burke, {REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, (1790),
Paragraph 19}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE
OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS.}

120.--We often act treacherously more from weak-
ness than from a fixed motive.

121.--We frequently do good to enable us with
impunity to do evil.

122.--If we conquer our passions it is more from
their weakness than from our strength.

123.--If we never flattered ourselves we should have
but scant pleasure.

124.--The most deceitful persons spend their lives
in blaming deceit, so as to use it on some great occa-
sion to promote some great interest.

125.--The daily employment of cunning marks a
little mind, it generally happens that those who resort
to it in one respect to protect themselves lay them-
selves open to attack in another.

[“With that low cunning which in fools supplies,
And amply, too, the place of being wise.”
Churchill, ROSCIAD, 117.]

126.--Cunning and treachery are the offspring of
incapacity.

127.--The true way to be deceived is to think one-
self more knowing than others.

128.--Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy,
true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.

129.--It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to
avoid being deceived by cunning men.

130.--Weakness is the only fault which cannot be
cured.

131.--The smallest fault of women who give them-
selves up to love is to love.
[------“Faciunt graviora coactae
Imperio sexus minimumque libidine peccant.”
Juvenal, SAT. vi., 134.]

132.--It is far easier to be wise for others than to
be so for oneself.

[Hence the proverb, “A man who is his own lawyer
has a fool for his client.”]

133.--The only good examples are those, that make
us see the absurdity of bad originals.

134.--We are never so ridiculous from the habits we
have as from those that we affect to have.

135.--We sometimes differ more widely from our-
selves than we do from others.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.