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Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims

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




458.--Our enemies come nearer the truth in the
opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of
ourselves.

459.--There are many remedies to cure love, yet
none are infallible.

460.--It would be well for us if we knew all our
passions make us do.

461.--Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of
life all the pleasures of youth.

462.--The same pride which makes us blame faults
from which we believe ourselves free causes us to
despise the good qualities we have not.

463.--There is often more pride than goodness in
our grief for our enemies' miseries; it is to show how
superior we are to them, that we bestow on them the
sign of our compassion.

464.--There exists an excess of good and evil which
surpasses our comprehension.

465.--Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the
same protection as crime.

466.--Of all the violent passions the one that
becomes a woman best is love.

467.--Vanity makes us sin more against our taste
than reason.

468.--Some bad qualities form great talents.

469.--We never desire earnestly what we desire in
reason.

470.--All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful,
both the good as well as the bad, and nearly all are
creatures of opportunities.

471.--In their first passion women love their lovers,
in all the others they love love.

[“In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all her others what she loves is love.”
{--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, Canto iii., stanza 3.
“We truly love once, the first time; the subsequent pas-
sions are more or less involuntary.” La Bruyère: DU COEUR.]

472.--Pride as the other passions has its follies. We
are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume
ourselves in having been and being able to be so.

473.--However rare true love is, true friendship is
rarer.

[“It is more common to see perfect love than real friend-
ship.”--La Bruyère. DU COEUR.]

474.--There are few women whose charm survives
their beauty.

475.--The desire to be pitied or to be admired often
forms the greater part of our confidence.

476.--Our envy always lasts longer than the happi-
ness of those we envy.

477.--The same firmness that enables us to resist
love enables us to make our resistance durable and
lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by
passions are seldom really possessed of any.

478.--Fancy does not enable us to invent so many
different contradictions as there are by nature in every
heart.

479.--It is only people who possess firmness who
can possess true gentleness. In those who appear
gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily
converted into harshness.

480.--Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to
blame in those we desire to cure of it.

481.--Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those
who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

482.--The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit
to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places
bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet
taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to
the full extent of its capacities.

483.--Usually we are more satirical from vanity
than malice.

484.--When the heart is still disturbed by the relics
of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than
when wholly cured.

485.--Those who have had great passions often find
all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.

486.--More persons exist without self-love than
without envy.

[“I do not believe that there is a human creature in his
senses arrived at maturity, that at some time or other has
not been carried away by this passion (envy) in good
earnest, and yet I never met with any who dared own he
was guilty of it, but in jest.”--Mandeville: FABLE OF THE
BEES; Remark N.]

487.--We have more idleness in the mind than in
the body.

488.--The calm or disturbance of our mind does
not depend so much on what we regard as the more
important things of life, as in a judicious or injudicious
arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.

489.--However wicked men may be, they do not
dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when
they desire to persecute her they either pretend to
believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

490.--We often go from love to ambition, but we
never return from ambition to love.

[“Men commence by love, finish by ambition, and do
not find a quieter seat while they remain there.”--La
Bruyère: DU COEUR.]

491.--Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken,
there is no passion which is oftener further away from
its mark, nor upon which the present has so much
power to the prejudice of the future.

492.--Avarice often produces opposite results: there
are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their
property to doubtful and distant expectations, others
mistake great future advantages for small present
interests.

[AIMÉ MARTIN says, “The author here confuses greedi-
ness, the desire and avarice--passions which probably have
a common origin, but produce different results. The
greedy man is nearly always desirous to possess, and often
foregoes great future advantages for small present interests.
The avaricious man, on the other hand, mistakes present
advantages for the great expectations of the future. Both
desire to possess and enjoy. But the miser possesses and
enjoys nothing but the pleasure of possessing; he risks
nothing, gives nothing, hopes nothing, his life is centred
in his strong box, beyond that he has no want.”]

493.--It appears that men do not find they have
enough faults, as they increase the number by certain
peculiar qualities that they affect to assume, and
which they cultivate with so great assiduity that at
length they become natural faults, which they can no
longer correct.

494.--What makes us see that men know their
faults better than we imagine, is that they are never
wrong when they speak of their conduct; the same
self-love that usually blinds them enlightens them,
and gives them such true views as to make them
suppress or disguise the smallest thing that might be
censured.

495.--Young men entering life should be either shy
or bold; a solemn and sedate manner usually de-
generates into impertinence.

496.--Quarrels would not last long if the fault was
only on one side.

497.--It is valueless to a woman to be young unless
pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

498.--Some persons are so frivolous and fickle that
they are as far removed from real defects as from
substantial qualities.

499.--We do not usually reckon a woman's first
flirtation until she has had a second.

500.--Some people are so self-occupied that when
in love they find a mode by which to be engrossed
with the passion without being so with the person
they love.

501.--Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more
by its ways than by itself.

502.--A little wit with good sense bores less in the
long run than much wit with ill nature.

503.--Jealousy is the worst of all evils, yet the one
that is least pitied by those who cause it.

504.--Thus having treated of the hollowness of so
many apparent virtues, it is but just to say something
on the hollowness of the contempt for death. I allude
to that contempt of death which the heathen boasted
they derived from their unaided understanding, with-
out the hope of a future state. There is a difference
between meeting death with courage and despising it.
The first is common enough, the last I think always
feigned. Yet everything that could be has been
written to persuade us that death is no evil, and the
weakest of men, equally with the bravest, have given
many noble examples on which to found such an
opinion, still I do not think that any man of good sense
has ever yet believed in it. And the pains we take to
persuade others as well as ourselves amply show that
the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may
be disgusted with life, but for none may we despise it.
Not even those who commit suicide regard it as a
light matter, and are as much alarmed and startled
as the rest of the world if death meets them in a dif-
ferent way than the one they have selected. The differ-
ence we observe in the courage of so great a number of
brave men, is from meeting death in a way different
from what they imagined, when it shows itself nearer at
one time than at another. Thus it ultimately happens
that having despised death when they were ignorant
of it, they dread it when they become acquainted with
it. If we could avoid seeing it with all its surround-
ings, we might perhaps believe that it was not the
greatest of evils. The wisest and bravest are those
who take the best means to avoid reflecting on it, as
every man who sees it in its real light regards it as
dreadful. The necessity of dying created all the con-
stancy of philosophers. They thought it but right to
go with a good grace when they could not avoid going,
and being unable to prolong their lives indefinitely,
nothing remained but to build an immortal reputation,
and to save from the general wreck all that could be
saved. To put a good face upon it, let it suffice, not
to say all that we think to ourselves, but rely more
on our nature than on our fallible reason, which might
make us think we could approach death with indif-
ference. The glory of dying with courage, the hope
of being regretted, the desire to leave behind us a
good reputation, the assurance of being enfranchised
from the miseries of life and being no longer depend-
ent on the wiles of fortune, are resources which
should not be passed over. But we must not regard
them as infallible. They should affect us in the same
proportion as a single shelter affects those who in war
storm a fortress. At a distance they think it may
afford cover, but when near they find it only a feeble
protection. It is only deceiving ourselves to imagine
that death, when near, will seem the same as at
a distance, or that our feelings, which are merely
weaknesses, are naturally so strong that they will
not suffer in an attack of the rudest of trials. It
is equally as absurd to try the effect of self-esteem
and to think it will enable us to count as naught
what will of necessity destroy it. And the mind in
which we trust to find so many resources will be far
too weak in the struggle to persuade us in the way we
wish. For it is this which betrays us so frequently,
and which, instead of filling us with contempt of death,
serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful.
The most it can do for us is to persuade us to avert
our gaze and fix it on other objects. Cato and Brutus
each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime ago
contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when
he was about to be broken on the wheel. So however
diverse the motives they but realize the same result.
For the rest it is a fact that whatever difference there
may be between the peer and the peasant, we have
constantly seen both the one and the other meet death
with the same composure. Still there is always this
difference, that the contempt the peer shows for death
is but the love of fame which hides death from his
sight; in the peasant it is but the result of his limited
vision that hides from him the extent of the evil, end
leaves him free to reflect on other things.



THE FIRST SUPPLEMENT

[The following reflections are extracted from the first two
editions of La Rochefoucauld, having been suppressed
by the author in succeeding issues.]


I.--Self-love is the love OF self, and of all things
FOR self. It makes men self-worshippers, and if for-
tune permits them, causes them to tyrannize over
others; it is never quiet when out of itself, and only
rests upon other subjects as a bee upon flowers, to
extract from them its proper food. Nothing is so
headstrong as its desires, nothing so well concealed as
its designs, nothing so skilful as its management; its
suppleness is beyond description; its changes surpass
those of the metamorphoses, its refinements those of
chemistry. We can neither plumb the depths nor
pierce the shades of its recesses. Therein it is hidden
from the most far-seeing eyes, therein it takes a thou-
sand imperceptible folds. There it is often to itself
invisible; it there conceives, there nourishes and rears,
without being aware of it, numberless loves and
hatreds, some so monstrous that when they are brought
to light it disowns them, and cannot resolve to avow
them. In the night which covers it are born the
ridiculous persuasions it has of itself, thence come its
errors, its ignorance, its silly mistakes; thence it is
led to believe that its passions which sleep are dead,
and to think that it has lost all appetite for that of
which it is sated. But this thick darkness which con-
ceals it from itself does not hinder it from seeing that
perfectly which is out of itself; and in this it re-
sembles our eyes which behold all, and yet cannot set
their own forms. In fact, in great concerns and im-
portant matters when the violence of its desires sum-
mons all its attention, it sees, feels, hears, imagines,
suspects, penetrates, divines all: so that we might
think that each of its passions had a magic power
proper to it. Nothing is so close and strong as its
attachments, which, in sight of the extreme misfor-
tunes which threaten it, it vainly attempts to break.
Yet sometimes it effects that without trouble and
quickly, which it failed to do with its whole power
and in the course of years, whence we may fairly con-
clude that it is by itself that its desires are inflamed,
rather than by the beauty and merit of its objects,
that its own taste embellishes and heightens them;
that it is itself the game it pursues, and that it follows
eagerly when it runs after that upon which itself is
eager. It is made up of contraries. It is imperious and
obedient, sincere and false, piteous and cruel, timid
and bold. It has different desires according to the
diversity of temperaments, which turn and fix it some-
times upon riches, sometimes on pleasures. It changes
according to our age, our fortunes, and our hopes;
it is quite indifferent whether it has many or one,
because it can split itself into many portions, and
unite in one as it pleases. It is inconstant, and besides
the changes which arise from strange causes it has
an infinity born of itself, and of its own substance.
It is inconstant through inconstancy, of lightness,
love, novelty, lassitude and distaste. It is capricious,
and one sees it sometimes work with intense eager-
ness and with incredible labour to obtain things of
little use to it which are even hurtful, but which it
pursues because it wishes for them. It is silly, and
often throws its whole application on the utmost
frivolities. It finds all its pleasure in the dullest
matters, and places its pride in the most contemptible.
It is seen in all states of life, and in all conditions; it
lives everywhere and upon everything; it subsists on
nothing; it accommodates itself either to things or to
the want of them; it goes over to those who are at war
with it, enters into their designs, and, this is wonderful,
it, with them, hates even itself; it conspires for its own
loss, it works towards its own ruin--in fact, caring only
to exist, and providing that it may BE, it will be its own
enemy! We must therefore not be surprised if it is
sometimes united to the rudest austerity, and if it
enters so boldly into partnership to destroy her,
because when it is rooted out in one place it re-esta-
blishes itself in another. When it fancies that it
abandons its pleasure it merely changes or suspends
its enjoyment. When even it is conquered in its full
flight, we find that it triumphs in its own defeat.
Here then is the picture of self-love whereof the whole
of our life is but one long agitation. The sea is its
living image; and in the flux and reflux of its con-
tinuous waves there is a faithful expression of the
stormy succession of its thoughts and of its eternal
motion. (Edition of 1665, No. 1.)

II.--Passions are only the different degrees of the
heat or coldness of the blood. (1665, No. 13.)

III.--Moderation in good fortune is but apprehen-
sion of the shame which follows upon haughtiness, or
a fear of losing what we have. (1665, No. 18.)

IV.--Moderation is like temperance in eating; we
could eat more but we fear to make ourselves ill.
(1665, No. 21.)

V.--Everybody finds that to abuse in another which
he finds worthy of abuse in himself. (1665, No. 33.)

VI.--Pride, as if tired of its artifices and its different
metamorphoses, after having solely filled the divers
parts of the comedy of life, exhibits itself with
its natural face, and is discovered by haughtiness; so
much so that we may truly say that haughtiness is but
the flash and open declaration of pride. (1665, No. 37.)

VII.--One kind of happiness is to know exactly at
what point to be miserable. (1665, No. 53.)

VIII.--When we do not find peace of mind (REPOS)
in ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere. (1665,
No. 53.)

IX.--One should be able to answer for one's fortune,
so as to be able to answer for what we shall do. (1665,
No. 70.)

X.--Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the
soul is to the body which it animates. (1665, No. 77.)

XI.--As one is never at liberty to love or to cease
from loving, the lover cannot with justice complain
of the inconstancy of his mistress, nor she of the
fickleness of her lover. (1665, No. 81.)

XII.--Justice in those judges who are moderate
is but a love of their place. (1665, No. 89.)

XIII.--When we are tired of loving we are quite
content if our mistress should become faithless, to loose
us from our fidelity. (1665, No. 85.)

XIV.--The first impulse of joy which we feel at the
happiness of our friends arises neither from our
natural goodness nor from friendship; it is the result
of self-love, which flatters us with being lucky in
our own turn, or in reaping something from the good
fortune of our friends. (1665, No. 97.)

XV.--In the adversity of our best friends we
always find something which is not wholly displeasing
to us. (1665, No. 99.)

[This gave occasion to Swift's celebrated “Verses on his
own Death.” The four first are quoted opposite the title,
then follow these lines:--
“This maxim more than all the rest,
Is thought too base for human breast;
In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.”

See also Chesterfield's defence of this in his 129th letter;
“they who know the deception and wickedness of the
human heart will not be either romantic or blind enough to
deny what Rochefoucauld and Swift have affirmed as a
general truth.”]

XVI.--How shall we hope that another person will
keep our secret if we do not keep it ourselves. (1665,
No. 100.)

XVII.--As if it was not sufficient that self-love
should have the power to change itself, it has added
that of changing other objects, and this it does in a
very astonishing manner; for not only does it so well
disguise them that it is itself deceived, but it even
changes the state and nature of things. Thus, when
a female is adverse to us, and she turns her hate
and persecution against us, self-love pronounces
on her actions with all the severity of justice;
it exaggerates the faults till they are enormous,
and looks at her good qualities in so disadvan-
tageous a light that they become more displeasing than
her faults. If however the same female becomes
favourable to us, or certain of our interests reconcile
her to us, our sole self interest gives her back the
lustre which our hatred deprived her of. The bad
qualities become effaced, the good ones appear with
a redoubled advantage; we even summon all our
indulgence to justify the war she has made upon us.
Now although all passions prove this truth, that of
love exhibits it most clearly; for we may see a
lover moved with rage by the neglect or the infidelity
of her whom he loves, and meditating the utmost
vengeance that his passion can inspire. Nevertheless
as soon as the sight of his beloved has calmed the
fury of his movements, his passion holds that beauty
innocent; he only accuses himself, he condemns his
condemnations, and by the miraculous power of self-
love, he whitens the blackest actions of his mistress,
and takes from her all crime to lay it on himself.

{No date or number is given for this maxim}

XVIII.--There are none who press so heavily on
others as the lazy ones, when they have satisfied their
idleness, and wish to appear industrious. (1666,
No. 91.)

XIX.--The blindness of men is the most dangerous
effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment
it, it deprives us of knowledge of remedies which can
solace our miseries and can cure our faults. (1665,
No. 102.)

XX.--One has never less reason than when one
despairs of finding it in others. (1665, No. 103.)

XXI.--Philosophers, and Seneca above all, have not
diminished crimes by their precepts; they have only
used them in the building up of pride. (1665, No. 105.)

XXII.--It is a proof of little friendship not to per-
ceive the growing coolness of that of our friends.
(1666, No. 97.)

XXIII.--The most wise may be so in indifferent and
ordinary matters, but they are seldom so in their
most serious affairs. (1665, No. 132.)

XXIV.--The most subtle folly grows out of the most
subtle wisdom. (1665, No. 134.)

XXV.--Sobriety is the love of health, or an in-
capacity to eat much. (l665, No. 135.)

XXVI.--We never forget things so well as when we
are tired of talking of them. (1665, No. 144.)

XXVII.--The praise bestowed upon us is at least
useful in rooting us in the practice of virtue. (1665,
No. 155.)

XXVIII.--Self-love takes care to prevent him whom
we flatter from being him who most flatters us. (1665,
No. 157.)

XXIX.--Men only blame vice and praise virtue
from interest. (1665, No. 151.)

XXX.--We make no difference in the kinds of anger,
although there is that which is light and almost inno-
cent, which arises from warmth of complexion, tem-
perament, and another very criminal, which is, to
speak properly, the fury of pride. (1665, No. 159.)

XXXI.--Great souls are not those who have fewer
passions and more virtues than the common, but
those only who have greater designs. (1665, No. 161.)

XXXII.--Kings do with men as with pieces of
money; they make them bear what value they will,
and one is forced to receive them according to their
currency value, and not at their true worth. (1665,
No. 165.)

[See Burns{, FOR A' THAT AN A' THAT}--
“The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
{The} man's {the gowd} for a' that.”
Also Farquhar and other parallel passages pointed out in
FAMILIAR WORDS.]

XXXIII.--Natural ferocity makes fewer people
cruel than self-love. (1665, No. 174.)

XXXIV.--One may say of all our virtues as an
Italian poet says of the propriety of women, that it
is often merely the art of appearing chaste. (1665,
No. 176.)

XXXV.--There are crimes which become innocent
and even glorious by their brilliancy,* their number, or
their excess; thus it happens that public robbery is
called financial skill, and the unjust capture of pro-
vinces is called a conquest. (1665, No. 192.)

*as those of Jael, of Deborah, of Brutus, and of Charlotte
Corday--further than this the maxim is satire.>

XXXVI.--One never finds in man good or evil in
excess. (1665, No. 201.)

XXXVII.--Those who are incapable of committing
great crimes do not easily suspect others. (1665,
No. {2}08.)

{The text incorrectly numbers this maxim as 508. It
is 208.}

XXXVIII.--The pomp of funerals concerns rather
the vanity of the living, than the honour of the
dead. (1665, No. 213.)

XXXIX.--Whatever variety and change appears in
the world, we may remark a secret chain, and a regu-
lated order of all time by Providence, which makes
everything follow in due rank and fall into its de-
stined course. (1665, No. 225.)

XL.--Intrepidity should sustain the heart in con-
spiracies in place of valour which alone furnishes all
the firmness which is necessary for the perils of war.
(1665, No. 231.)

XLI.--Those who wish to define victory by her birth
will be tempted to imitate the poets, and to call her
the Daughter of Heaven, since they cannot find her
origin on earth. Truly she is produced from an
infinity of actions, which instead of wishing to beget
her, only look to the particular interests of their
masters, since all those who compose an army, in
aiming at their own rise and glory, produce a good
so great and general. (1665, No. 232.)

XLII.--That man who has never been in danger
cannot answer for his courage. (1665, No. 236.)

XLIII.--We more often place bounds on our grati-
tude than on our desires and our hopes. (1665, No.
241.)

XLIV.--Imitation is always unhappy, for all which
is counterfeit displeases by the very things which
charm us when they are original (NATURELLES). (1665,
No. 245.)

XLV.--We do not regret the loss of our friends ac-
cording to THEIR merits, but according to OUR wants,
and the opinion with which we believed we had im-
pressed them of our worth. (1665, No. 248.)

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