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Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims

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




268.--We credit judges with the meanest motives,
and yet we desire our reputation and fame should
depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either
from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of in-
telligence, opposed to us--and yet 'tis only to make
these men decide in our favour that we peril in so
many ways both our peace and our life.

269.--No man is clever enough to know all the evil
he does.

270.--One honour won is a surety for more.

271.--Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the
fever of reason.

[“The best of life is but intoxication.”--{Lord Byron, }
Don Juan{, Canto II, stanza 179}.
In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes with--“it is
the fever of health, the folly of reason.”]

272.--Nothing should so humiliate men who have
deserved great praise, as the care they have taken
to acquire it by the smallest means.

273.--There are persons of whom the world approves
who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the
affairs of life.

274.--The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower
to the fruit; it lends a lustre which is easily lost,
but which never returns.

275.--Natural goodness, which boasts of being so
apparent, is often smothered by the least interest.

276.--Absence extinguishes small passions and in-
creases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle,
and blow in a fire.

277.--Women often think they love when they do
not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of
mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards
the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing,
persuades them that they have real passion when they
have but flirtation.

[“And if in fact she takes a {“}GRANDE PASSION{”},
It is a very serious thing indeed:
Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion,
Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead,
The pride of a mere child with a new sash on.
Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed:
But the {TENTH} instance will be a tornado,
For there's no saying what they will or may do.”
{--Lord Byron, }DON JUAN, canto xii. stanza 77.]

278.--What makes us so often discontented with
those who transact business for us is that they almost
always abandon the interest of their friends for the
interest of the business, because they wish to have
the honour of succeeding in that which they have
undertaken.

279.--When we exaggerate the tenderness of our
friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude
than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.

280.--The praise we give to new comers into the
world arises from the envy we bear to those who are
established.

281.--Pride, which inspires, often serves to mode-
rate envy.

282.--Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that
we should judge badly were we not deceived.

283.--Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing
how to use than in giving good advice.

284.--There are wicked people who would be much
less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.

285.--Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its
name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense
of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

286.--It is impossible to love a second time those
whom we have really ceased to love.

287.--Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so
many resources on the same matter, as the lack of
intelligence makes us hesitate at each thing our ima-
gination presents, and hinders us from at first discern-
ing which is the best.

288.--There are matters and maladies which at
certain times remedies only serve to make worse;
true skill consists in knowing when it is dangerous to
use them.

289.--Affected simplicity is refined imposture.

[Domitianus simplicitatis ac modestiae imagine studium
litterarum et amorem carminum simulabat quo velaret
animum et fratris aemulationi subduceretur.--Tacitus,
ANN. iv.]

290.--There are as many errors of temper as of
mind.

291.--Man's merit, like the crops, has its season.

292.--One may say of temper as of many buildings;
it has divers aspects, some agreeable, others dis-
agreeable.

293.--Moderation cannot claim the merit of op-
posing and overcoming Ambition: they are never
found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth
of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.

294.--We always like those who admire us, we do
not always like those whom we admire.

295.--It is well that we know not all our wishes.

296.--It is difficult to love those we do not esteem,
but it is no less so to love those whom we esteem much
more than ourselves.

297.--Bodily temperaments have a common course
and rule which imperceptibly affect our will. They
advance in combination, and successively exercise a
secret empire over us, so that, without our perceiving
it, they become a great part of all our actions.

298.--The gratitude of most men is but a secret
desire of receiving greater benefits.

[Hence the common proverb “Gratitude is merely a
lively sense of favors to come.”]

299.--Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying
small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling,
but there is hardly one who does not show ingrati-
tude for great favours.

300.--There are follies as catching as infections.

301.--Many people despise, but few know how to
bestow wealth.

302.--Only in things of small value we usually are
bold enough not to trust to appearances.

303.--Whatever good quality may be imputed to
us, we ourselves find nothing new in it.

304.--We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot
forgive those whom we bore.

305.--Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds
often should be praised for our good deeds.

306.--We find very few ungrateful people when we
are able to confer favours.

307.--It is as proper to be boastful alone as it is
ridiculous to be so in company.

308.--Moderation is made a virtue to limit the am-
bition of the great; to console ordinary people for
their small fortune and equally small ability.

309.--There are persons fated to be fools, who com-
mit follies not only by choice, but who are forced by
fortune to do so.

310.--Sometimes there are accidents in our life the
skilful extrication from which demands a little folly.

311.--If there be men whose folly has never ap-
peared, it is because it has never been closely looked
for.

312.--Lovers are never tired of each other,--they
always speak of themselves.

313.--How is it that our memory is good enough to
retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet
not good enough to recollect how often we have told
it to the same person?

[“Old men who yet retain the memory of things past,
and forget how often they have told them, are most tedious
companions.”--Montaigne, {ESSAYS, Book I, Chapter IX}.]

314.--The extreme delight we take in talking of
ourselves should warn us that it is not shared by those
who listen.

315.--What commonly hinders us from showing the
recesses of our heart to our friends, is not the dis-
trust we have of them, but that we have of our-
selves.

316.--Weak persons cannot be sincere.

317.--'Tis a small misfortune to oblige an ungrate-
ful man; but it is unbearable to be obliged by a
scoundrel.

318.--We may find means to cure a fool of his folly,
but there are none to set straight a cross-grained
spirit.

319.--If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults
we cannot long preserve the feelings we should hold
towards our friends and benefactors.

320.--To praise princes for virtues they do not pos-
sess is but to reproach them with impunity.

[“Praise undeserved is satire in disguise,” quoted by
Pope from a poem which has not survived, “The Garland,”
by Mr. Broadhurst. “In some cases exaggerated or
inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire.”--
Scott, WOODSTOCK.]

321.--We are nearer loving those who hate us, than
those who love us more than we desire.

322.--Those only are despicable who fear to be
despised.

323.--Our wisdom is no less at the mercy of Fortune
than our goods.

324.--There is more self-love than love in jealousy.

325.--We often comfort ourselves by the weakness
of evils, for which reason has not the strength to con-
sole us.

326.--Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour
itself.

[“No,” says a commentator, “Ridicule may do harm,
but it cannot dishonour; it is vice which confers dis-
honour.”]

327.--We own to small faults to persuade others
that we have not great ones.

328.--Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

329.--We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery
--we only dislike the method.

[“{But} when I tell him he hates flatter{ers},
He says he does, being then most flattered.”
Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR{, Act II, Scene I, Decius}.]

330.--We pardon in the degree that we love.

331.--It is more difficult to be faithful to a mistress
when one is happy, than when we are ill-treated by
her.

[Si qua volet regnare diu contemnat amantem.--Ovid,
AMORES, ii. 19.]

332.--Women do not know all their powers of
flirtation.

333.--Women cannot be completely severe unless
they hate.

334.--Women can less easily resign flirtations than
love.

335.--In love deceit almost always goes further
than mistrust.

336.--There is a kind of love, the excess of which
forbids jealousy.

337.--There are certain good qualities as there are
senses, and those who want them can neither per-
ceive nor understand them.

338.--When our hatred is too bitter it places us
below those whom we hate.

339.--We only appreciate our good or evil in pro-
portion to our self-love.

340.--The wit of most women rather strengthens
their folly than their reason.

[“Women have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit,
but for solid reasoning and good sense I never knew one in
my life that had it, and who reasoned and acted conse-
quentially for four and twenty hours together.”--Lord
Chesterfield, LETTER 129.]

341.--The heat of youth is not more opposed to
safety than the coldness of age.

342.--The accent of our native country dwells in
the heart and mind as well as on the tongue.

343.--To be a great man one should know how to
profit by every phase of fortune.

344.--Most men, like plants, possess hidden quali-
ties which chance discovers.

345.--Opportunity makes us known to others, but
more to ourselves.

346.--If a woman's temper is beyond control there
can be no control of the mind or heart.

347.--We hardly find any persons of good sense, save
those who agree with us.

[“That was excellently observed, say I, when I read
an author when his opinion agrees with mine.”--Swift,
THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.]

348.--When one loves one doubts even what one
most believes.

349.--The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate
flirtation.

350.--Why we hate with so much bitterness those
who deceive us is because they think themselves more
clever than we are.

[“I could pardon all his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I can-
not forgive his supposing me capable of the gross folly
of being duped by his professions.”--Sir Walter Scott,
QUENTIN DURWARD.]

351.--We have much trouble to break with one,
when we no longer are in love.

352.--We almost always are bored with persons with
whom we should not be bored.

353.--A gentleman may love like a lunatic, but not
like a beast.

354.--There are certain defects which well mounted
glitter like virtue itself.

355.--Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our
regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom
our grief is greater than our regret.

356.--Usually we only praise heartily those who
admire us.

357.--Little minds are too much wounded by little
things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

358.--Humility is the true proof of Christian
virtues; without it we retain all our faults, and they
are only covered by pride to hide them from others,
and often from ourselves.

359.--Infidelities should extinguish love, and we
ought not to be jealous when we have cause to be so.
No persons escape causing jealousy who are worthy of
exciting it.

360.--We are more humiliated by the least infidelity
towards us, than by our greatest towards others.

361.--Jealousy is always born with love, but does
not always die with it.

362.--Most women do not grieve so much for the
death of their lovers for love's-sake, as to show they
were worthy of being beloved.

363.--The evils we do to others give us less pain
than those we do to ourselves.

364.--We well know that it is bad taste to talk of
our wives; but we do not so well know that it is the
same to speak of ourselves.

365.--There are virtues which degenerate into vices
when they arise from Nature, and others which when
acquired are never perfect. For example, reason
must teach us to manage our estate and our con-
fidence, while Nature should have given us goodness
and valour.

366.--However we distrust the sincerity of those
whom we talk with, we always believe them more sin-
cere with us than with others.

367.--There are few virtuous women who are not
tired of their part.

[“Every woman is at heart a rake.”-–Pope. MORAL
ESSAYS, ii.]

368.--The greater number of good women are like
concealed treasures, safe as no one has searched for
them.

369.--The violences we put upon ourselves to escape
love are often more cruel than the cruelty of those
we love.

370.--There are not many cowards who know the
whole of their fear.

371.--It is generally the fault of the loved one not
to perceive when love ceases.

372.--Most young people think they are natural
when they are only boorish and rude.

373.--Some tears after having deceived others de-
ceive ourselves.

374.--If we think we love a woman for love of
herself we are greatly deceived.

375.--Ordinary men commonly condemn what is
beyond them.

376.--Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirta-
tion by true love.

377.--The greatest mistake of penetration is not to
have fallen short, but to have gone too far.

378.--We may bestow advice, but we cannot inspire
the conduct.

379.--As our merit declines so also does our taste.

380.--Fortune makes visible our virtues or our
vices, as light does objects.

381.--The struggle we undergo to remain faithful
to one we love is little better than infidelity.

382.--Our actions are like the rhymed ends of
blank verses (BOUTS-RIMÉS) where to each one puts
what construction he pleases.

[The BOUTS-RIMÉS was a literary game popular in the 17th
and 18th centuries--the rhymed words at the end of a line
being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole
being given, “brook, why, crook, I,” returned the bur-
lesque verse--
“I sits with my toes in a BROOK,
And if any one axes me WHY?
I gies 'em a rap with my CROOK,
'Tis constancy makes me, ses I.”]

383.--The desire of talking about ourselves, and of
putting our faults in the light we wish them to be
seen, forms a great part of our sincerity.

384.--We should only be astonished at still being
able to be astonished.

385.--It is equally as difficult to be contented when
one has too much or too little love.

386.--No people are more often wrong than those
who will not allow themselves to be wrong.

387.--A fool has not stuff in him to be good.

388.--If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at
least she makes them totter.

389.--What makes the vanity of others unsupport-
able is that it wounds our own.

390.--We give up more easily our interest than our
taste.

391.--Fortune appears so blind to none as to those
to whom she has done no good.

392.--We should manage fortune like our health,
enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad,
and never resort to strong remedies but in an extremity.

393.--Awkwardness sometimes disappears in the
camp, never in the court.

394.--A man is often more clever than one other, but
not than all others.

[“Singuli decipere ac decipi possunt, nemo omnes,
omnes neminem fefellerunt.”--Pliny{ the Younger,
PANEGYRICUS, LXII}.]

395.--We are often less unhappy at being deceived
by one we loved, than on being deceived.

396.--We keep our first lover for a long time--if we
do not get a second.

397.--We have not the courage to say generally
that we have no faults, and that our enemies have
no good qualities; but in fact we are not far from be-
lieving so.

398.--Of all our faults that which we most readily
admit is idleness: we believe that it makes all virtues
ineffectual, and that without utterly destroying, it at
least suspends their operation.

399.--There is a kind of greatness which does not
depend upon fortune: it is a certain manner what
distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for
great things; it is the value we insensibly set upon
ourselves; it is by this quality that we gain the
deference of other men, and it is this which com-
monly raises us more above them, than birth, rank,
or even merit itself.

400.--There may be talent without position, but
there is no position without some kind of talent.

401.--Rank is to merit what dress is to a pretty
woman.

402.--What we find the least of in flirtation is love.

403.--Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us,
and there are tiresome people whose deserts would be
ill rewarded if we did not desire to purchase their
absence.

404.--It appears that nature has hid at the bottom
of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It
is only the passions that have the power of bringing
them to light, and sometimes give us views more
true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

405.--We reach quite inexperienced the different
stages of life, and often, in spite of the number of our
years, we lack experience.

[“To most men experience is like the stern lights of a
ship which illumine only the track it has passed.”--
Coleridge.]

406.--Flirts make it a point of honour to be jealous
of their lovers, to conceal their envy of other women.

407.--It may well be that those who have trapped
us by their tricks do not seem to us so foolish as we
seem to ourselves when trapped by the tricks of
others.

408.--The most dangerous folly of old persons who
have been loveable is to forget that they are no
longer so.

[“Every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself
handsome. The suspicion of age no woman, let her be
ever so old, forgives.”--Lord Chesterfield, LETTER 129.]

409.--We should often be ashamed of our very best
actions if the world only saw the motives which caused
them.

410.--The greatest effort of friendship is not to show
our faults to a friend, but to show him his own.

4ll.--We have few faults which are not far more
excusable than the means we adopt to hide them.

412.--Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it
is almost always in our power to re-establish our cha-
racter.

[“This is hardly a period at which the most irregular
character may not be redeemed. The mistakes of one sin
find a retreat in patriotism, those of the other in devotion.”
-Junius, LETTER TO THE KING.]

413.--A man cannot please long who has only one
kind of wit.

[According to Segrais this maxim was a hit at Racine
and Boileau, who, despising ordinary conversation, talked
incessantly of literature; but there is some doubt as to
Segrais' statement.--Aimé Martin.]

414.--Idiots and lunatics see only their own wit.

415.--Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with
impunity.

416.--The vivacity which increases in old age is not
far removed from folly.

[“How ill {white} hairs become {a} fool and jester.”--
Shakespeare{, King Henry IV, Part II, Act. V, Scene V,
King}.

“Can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of
life? Can grey hairs make folly venerable, and is there
no period to be reserved for meditation or retirement.”--
Junius, TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD, 19th Sept. 1769.]

417.--In love the quickest is always the best cure.

418.--Young women who do not want to appear
flirts, and old men who do not want to appear ridi-
culous, should not talk of love as a matter wherein
they can have any interest.

419.--We may seem great in a post beneath our
capacity, but we oftener seem little in a post above it.

420.--We often believe we have constancy in mis-
fortune when we have nothing but debasement, and
we suffer misfortunes without regarding them as
cowards who let themselves be killed from fear of
defending themselves.

421.--Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

422.--All passions make us commit some faults,
love alone makes us ridiculous.

[“In love we all are fools alike.”--Gay{, THE
BEGGAR'S OPERA, (1728), Act III, Scene I, Lucy}.]

423.--Few know how to be old.

424.--We often credit ourselves with vices the
reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of
our obstinacy.

425.--Penetration has a spice of divination in it
which tickles our vanity more than any other quality
of the mind.

426.--The charm of novelty and old custom, how-
ever opposite to each other, equally blind us to the
faults of our friends.

[“Two things the most opposite blind us equally, custom
and novelty.”-La Bruyère, DES JUDGEMENTS.]

427.--Most friends sicken us of friendship, most
devotees of devotion.

428.--We easily forgive in our friends those faults
we do not perceive.

429.--Women who love, pardon more readily great
indiscretions than little infidelities.

430.--In the old age of love as in life we still sur-
vive for the evils, though no longer for the pleasures.

[“The youth of friendship is better than its old age.”--
Hazlitt's CHARACTERISTICS, 229.]

431.--Nothing prevents our being unaffected so
much as our desire to seem so.

432.--To praise good actions heartily is in some
measure to take part in them.

433.--The most certain sign of being born with
great qualities is to be born without envy.

[“Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae.”
-Cicero IN MARC ANT.]

434.--When our friends have deceived us we owe
them but indifference to the tokens of their friend-
ship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe them
pity.

435.--Luck and temper rule the world.

436.--It is far easier to know men than to know
man.

437.--We should not judge of a man's merit by his
great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.

438.--There is a certain lively gratitude which not
only releases us from benefits received, but which also,
by making a return to our friends as payment, renders
them indebted to us.

[“And understood not that a grateful mind,
By owing owes not, but is at once
Indebted and discharged.”
Milton. PARADISE LOST.]

439.--We should earnestly desire but few things if
we clearly knew what we desired.

440.--The cause why the majority of women are so
little given to friendship is, that it is insipid after
having felt love.

[“Those who have experienced a great passion neglect
friendship, and those who have united themselves to friend-
ship have nought to do with love.”--La Bruyère. DU COEUR.]

441.--As in friendship so in love, we are often hap-
pier from ignorance than from knowledge.

442.--We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth
to correct.

443.--The most violent passions give some respite,
but vanity always disturbs us.

444.--Old fools are more foolish than young fools.

[“MALVOLIO. Infirmity{,} that decays the wise{,} doth eve{r}
make the better fool.
CLOWN. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the
better increasing of your folly.”--Shakespeare. TWELFTH
NIGHT{, Act I, Scene V}.]

445.--Weakness is more hostile to virtue than vice.

446.--What makes the grief of shame and jealousy
so acute is that vanity cannot aid us in enduring them.

447.--Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most
obeyed.

[Honour has its supreme laws, to which education is
bound to conform....Those things which honour
forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do
not concur in the prohibition, and those it commands are
more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be
commanded by law.--Montesquieu, {THE SPIRIT OF LAWS, }b. 4,
c. ii.]

448.--A well-trained mind has less difficulty in sub-
mitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.

449.--When fortune surprises us by giving us some
great office without having gradually led us to expect
it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh
impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy
to fill it.

450.--Our pride is often increased by what we
retrench from our other faults.

[“The loss of sensual pleasures was supplied and com-
pensated by spiritual pride.”--Gibbon. DECLINE AND FALL,
chap. xv.]

451.--No fools so wearisome as those who have some
wit.

452.--No one believes that in every respect he is
behind the man he considers the ablest in the world.

453.--In great matters we should not try so much
to create opportunities as to utilise those that offer
themselves.

[Yet Lord Bacon says “A wise man will make more
opportunities than he finds.”--Essays, {(1625),
“Of Ceremonies and Respects”}]

454.--There are few occasions when we should make
a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that
no ill was said of us.

455.--However disposed the world may be to judge
wrongly, it far oftener favours false merit than does
justice to true.

456.--Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one
with discretion.

457.--We should gain more by letting the world see
what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.

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