{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_9105/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_9105","id":"gutenberg_9105","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9105","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: French Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Maxims"],"text":"Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer\n\n\n\n\n\nREFLECTIONS; OR SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS\n\nBy Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac\n\n\nTranslated from the Editions of 1678 and 1827 with introduction, notes,\nand some account of the author and his times.\n\nBy J. W. Willis Bund, M.A. LL.B and J. Hain Friswell\n\nSimpson Low, Son, and Marston, 188, Fleet Street.\n\n1871.\n\n\n{TRANSCRIBERS NOTES: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour\ninstead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); the\ntranslators' comments are in square brackets [...] as they are in the\ntext; footnotes are indicated by * and appear immediately following the\npassage containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of\nthe page); and, finally, corrections and addenda are in curly brackets\n{...}.}\n\n\n\nROCHEFOUCAULD\n\n\"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature--I believe them true. They\nargue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind.\"--Swift.\n\n\"Les Maximes de la Rochefoucauld sont des proverbs des gens\nd'esprit.\"--Montesquieu.\n\n\"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.\"--Sir J. Mackintosh.\n\n\"Translators should not work alone; for good Et Propria Verba do not\nalways occur to one mind.\"--Luther's Table Talk, iii.\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n     Preface (translator's)\n     Introduction (translator's)\n     Reflections and Moral Maxims\n     First Supplement\n     Second Supplement\n     Third Supplement\n     Reflections on Various Subjects\n     Index\n\n\n\n\nPreface.\n\n {Translators'}\nSome apology must be made for an attempt \"to translate the\nuntranslatable.\" Notwithstanding there are no less than eight English\ntranslations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly any are readable, none are free\nfrom faults, and all fail more or less to convey the author's meaning.\nThough so often translated, there is not a complete English edition\nof the Maxims and Reflections. All the translations are confined\nexclusively to the Maxims, none include the Reflections. This may be\naccounted for, from the fact that most of the translations are taken\nfrom the old editions of the Maxims, in which the Reflections do\nnot appear. Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text of\nRochefoucauld, the various editions were but reprints of the preceding\nones, without any regard to the alterations made by the author in the\nlater editions published during his life-time. So much was this the\ncase, that Maxims which had been rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last\nedition, were still retained in the body of the work. To give but one\nexample, the celebrated Maxim as to the misfortunes of our friends, was\nomitted in the last edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's\nlife-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim appears in the body\nof the work.\n\nM. Aime Martin in 1827 published an edition of the Maxims and\nReflections which has ever since been the standard text of Rochefoucauld\nin France. The Maxims are printed from the edition of 1678, the last\npublished during the author's life, and the last which received his\ncorrections. To this edition were added two Supplements; the first\ncontaining the Maxims which had appeared in the editions of 1665, 1666,\nand 1675, and which were afterwards omitted; the second, some additional\nMaxims found among various of the author's manuscripts in the Royal\nLibrary at Paris. And a Series of Reflections which had been previously\npublished in a work called \"Receuil de pieces d'histoire et de\nlitterature.\" Paris, 1731. They were first published with the Maxims in\nan edition by Gabriel Brotier.\n\nIn an edition of Rochefoucauld entitled \"Reflexions, ou Sentences et\nMaximes Morales, augmentees de plus deux cent nouvelles Maximes et\nMaximes et Pensees diverses suivant les copies Imprimees a Paris, chez\nClaude Barbin, et Matre Cramoisy 1692,\"* some fifty Maxims were added,\nascribed by the editor to Rochefoucauld, and as his family allowed them\nto be published under his name, it seems probable they were genuine.\nThese fifty form the third supplement to this book.\n\n     *In all the French editions this book is spoken of as\n     published in 1693. The only copy I have seen is in the\n     Cambridge University Library, 47, 16, 81, and is called\n     \"Reflexions Morales.\"\n\n\nThe apology for the present edition of Rochefoucauld must therefore be\ntwofold: firstly, that it is an attempt to give the public a complete\nEnglish edition of Rochefoucauld's works as a moralist. The body of the\nwork comprises the Maxims as the author finally left them, the first\nsupplement, those published in former editions, and rejected by the\nauthor in the later; the second, the unpublished Maxims taken from the\nauthor's correspondence and manuscripts, and the third, the Maxims first\npublished in 1692. While the Reflections, in which the thoughts in the\nMaxims are extended and elaborated, now appear in English for the first\ntime. And secondly, that it is an attempt (to quote the preface of the\nedition of 1749) \"to do the Duc de la Rochefoucauld the justice to make\nhim speak English.\"\n\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n {Translators'}\nThe description of the \"ancien regime\" in France, \"a despotism tempered\nby epigrams,\" like most epigrammatic sentences, contains some truth,\nwith much fiction. The society of the last half of the seventeenth, and\nthe whole of the eighteenth centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced\nby the precise and terse mode in which the popular writers of that date\nexpressed their thoughts. To a people naturally inclined to think that\nevery possible view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is\nincluded in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word \"voila,\" truths\nexpressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm. It\nis, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so many eminent\nFrench writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere,\nMontesquieu, and Vauvenargues, each contributed to the rich stock of\nFrench epigrams. No other country can show such a list of brilliant\nwriters--in England certainly we cannot. Our most celebrated, Lord\nBacon, has, by his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their fame\nis, to a great measure, obscured. The only Englishman who could have\nrivalled La Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere was the Earl of Chesterfield,\nand he only could have done so from his very intimate connexion\nwith France; but unfortunately his brilliant genius was spent in the\nimpossible task of trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in \"cutting\nblocks with a razor.\"\n\nOf all the French epigrammatic writers La Rochefoucauld is at once the\nmost widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion\non the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says,\n\"One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of\nthe nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the\ncollection of maxims, by Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld.\"\n\nThis Francois, the second Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac,\nthe author of the maxims, was one of the most illustrious members of the\nmost illustrious families among the French noblesse. Descended from the\nancient Dukes of Guienne, the founder of the Family Fulk or Foucauld, a\nyounger branch of the House of Lusignan, was at the commencement of\nthe eleventh century the Seigneur of a small town, La Roche, in the\nAngounois. Our chief knowledge of this feudal lord is drawn from\nthe monkish chronicles. As the benefactor of the various abbeys and\nmonasteries in his province, he is naturally spoken of by them in terms\nof eulogy, and in the charter of one of the abbeys of Angouleme he is\ncalled, \"vir nobilissimus Fulcaldus.\" His territorial power enabled him\nto adopt what was then, as is still in Scotland, a common custom, to\nprefix the name of his estate to his surname, and thus to create and\ntransmit to his descendants the illustrious surname of La Rochefoucauld.\n\nFrom that time until that great crisis in the history of the French\naristocracy, the Revolution of 1789, the family of La Rochefoucauld have\nbeen, \"if not first, in the very first line\" of that most illustrious\nbody. One Seigneur served under Philip Augustus against Richard Coeur de\nLion, and was made prisoner at the battle of Gisors. The eighth\nSeigneur Guy performed a great tilt at Bordeaux, attended (according\nto Froissart) to the Lists by some two hundred of his kindred and\nrelations. The sixteenth Seigneur Francais was chamberlain to Charles\nVIII. and Louis XII., and stood at the font as sponsor, giving his name\nto that last light of French chivalry, Francis I. In 1515 he was created\na baron, and was afterwards advanced to a count, on account of his great\nservice to Francis and his predecessors.\n\nThe second count pushed the family fortune still further by obtaining\na patent as the Prince de Marsillac. His widow, Anne de Polignac,\nentertained Charles V. at the family chateau at Verteuil, in so princely\na manner that on leaving Charles observed, \"He had never entered a\nhouse so redolent of high virtue, uprightness, and lordliness as that\nmansion.\"\n\nThe third count, after serving with distinction under the Duke of\nGuise against the Spaniards, was made prisoner at St. Quintin, and only\nregained his liberty to fall a victim to the \"bloody infamy\" of St.\nBartholomew. His son, the fourth count, saved with difficulty from that\nmassacre, after serving with distinction in the religious wars, was\ntaken prisoner in a skirmish at St. Yriex la Perche, and murdered by the\nLeaguers in cold blood.\n\nThe fifth count, one of the ministers of Louis XIII., after fighting\nagainst the English and Buckingham at the Ile de Re, was created a duke.\nHis son Francis, the second duke, by his writings has made the family\nname a household word.\n\nThe third duke fought in many of the earlier campaigns of Louis XIV. at\nTorcy, Lille, Cambray, and was dangerously wounded at the passage of\nthe Rhine. From his bravery he rose to high favour at Court, and was\nappointed Master of the Horse (Grand Veneur) and Lord Chamberlain. His\nson, the fourth duke, commanded the regiment of Navarre, and took part\nin storming the village of Neerwinden on the day when William III. was\ndefeated at Landen. He was afterwards created Duc de la Rochequyon and\nMarquis de Liancourt.\n\nThe fifth duke, banished from Court by Louis XV., became the friend of\nthe philosopher Voltaire.\n\nThe sixth duke, the friend of Condorcet, was the last of the long line\nof noble lords who bore that distinguished name. In those terrible days\nof September, 1792, when the French people were proclaiming universal\nhumanity, the duke was seized as an aristocrat by the mob at Gisors and\nput to death behind his own carriage, in which sat his mother and\nhis wife, at the very place where, some six centuries previously, his\nancestor had been taken prisoner in a fair fight. A modern writer has\nspoken of this murder \"as an admirable reprisal upon the grandson\nfor the writings and conduct of the grandfather.\" But M. Sainte Beuve\nobserves as to this, he can see nothing admirable in the death of the\nduke, and if it proves anything, it is only that the grandfather was not\nso wrong in his judgment of men as is usually supposed.\n\nFrancis, the author, was born on the 15th December 1615. M. Sainte Beuve\ndivides his life into four periods, first, from his birth till he was\nthirty-five, when he became mixed up in the war of the Fronde; the\nsecond period, during the progress of that war; the third, the twelve\nyears that followed, while he recovered from his wounds, and wrote his\nmaxims during his retirement from society; and the last from that time\ntill his death.\n\nIn the same way that Herodotus calls each book of his history by\nthe name of one of the muses, so each of these four periods of La\nRochefoucauld's life may be associated with the name of a woman who was\nfor the time his ruling passion. These four ladies are the Duchesse de\nChevreuse, the Duchesse de Longueville, Madame de Sable, and Madame de\nLa Fayette.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld's early education was neglected; his father, occupied\nin the affairs of state, either had not, or did not devote any time to\nhis education. His natural talents and his habits of observation soon,\nhowever, supplied all deficiencies. By birth and station placed in\nthe best society of the French Court, he soon became a most finished\ncourtier. Knowing how precarious Court favour then was, his father, when\nyoung Rochefoucauld was only nine years old, sent him into the army.\nHe was subsequently attached to the regiment of Auvergne. Though but\nsixteen he was present, and took part in the military operations at the\nsiege of Cassel. The Court of Louis XIII. was then ruled imperiously\nby Richelieu. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld was strongly opposed to the\nCardinal's party. By joining in the plots of Gaston of Orleans, he gave\nRichelieu an opportunity of ridding Paris of his opposition. When those\nplots were discovered, the Duke was sent into a sort of banishment to\nBlois. His son, who was then at Court with him, was, upon the pretext of\na liaison with Mdlle. d'Hautefort, one of the ladies in waiting on the\nQueen (Anne of Austria), but in reality to prevent the Duke learning\nwhat was passing at Paris, sent with his father. The result of the exile\nwas Rochefoucauld's marriage. With the exception that his wife's name\nwas Mdlle. Vivonne, and that she was the mother of five sons and three\ndaughters, nothing is known of her. While Rochefoucauld and his father\nwere at Blois, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, one of the beauties of\nthe Court, and the mistress of Louis, was banished to Tours. She and\nRochefoucauld met, and soon became intimate, and for a time she was\ndestined to be the one motive of his actions. The Duchesse was engaged\nin a correspondence with the Court of Spain and the Queen. Into this\nplot Rochefoucauld threw himself with all his energy; his connexion with\nthe Queen brought him back to his old love Mdlle. d'Hautefort, and led\nhim to her party, which he afterwards followed. The course he took shut\nhim off from all chance of Court favour. The King regarded him with\ncoldness, the Cardinal with irritation. Although the Bastile and the\nscaffold, the fate of Chalais and Montmorency, were before his eyes,\nthey failed to deter him from plotting. He was about twenty-three;\nreturning to Paris, he warmly sided with the Queen. He says in his\nMemoirs that the only persons she could then trust were himself and\nMdlle. d'Hautefort, and it was proposed he should take both of them\nfrom Paris to Brussels. Into this plan he entered with all his youthful\nindiscretion, it being for several reasons the very one he would wish to\nadopt, as it would strengthen his influence with Anne of Austria, place\nRichelieu and his master in an uncomfortable position, and save Mdlle.\nd'Hautefort from the attentions the King was showing her.\n\nBut Richelieu of course discovered this plot, and Rochefoucauld was,\nof course, sent to the Bastile. He was liberated after a week's\nimprisonment, but banished to his chateau at Verteuil.\n\nThe reason for this clemency was that the Cardinal desired to win\nRochefoucauld from the Queen's party. A command in the army was offered\nto him, but by the Queen's orders refused.\n\nFor some three years Rochefoucauld remained at Verteuil, waiting the\ntime for his reckoning with Richelieu; speculating on the King's death,\nand the favours he would then receive from the Queen. During this period\nhe was more or less engaged in plotting against his enemy the Cardinal,\nand hatching treason with Cinq Mars and De Thou.\n\nM. Sainte Beuve says, that unless we study this first part of\nRochefoucauld's life, we shall never understand his maxims. The bitter\ndisappointment of the passionate love, the high hopes then formed, the\ndeceit and treachery then witnessed, furnished the real key to their\nmeaning. The cutting cynicism of the morality was built on the ruins of\nthat chivalrous ambition and romantic affection. He saw his friend Cinq\nMars sent to the scaffold, himself betrayed by men whom he had trusted,\nand the only reason he could assign for these actions was intense\nselfishness.\n\nMeanwhile, Richelieu died. Rochefoucauld returned to Court, and found\nAnne of Austria regent, and Mazarin minister. The Queen's former friends\nflocked there in numbers, expecting that now their time of prosperity\nhad come. They were bitterly disappointed. Mazarin relied on hope\ninstead of gratitude, to keep the Queen's adherents on his side. The\nmost that any received were promises that were never performed. In after\nyears, doubtless, Rochefoucauld's recollection of his disappointment led\nhim to write the maxim: \"We promise according to our hopes, we perform\naccording to our fears.\" But he was not even to receive promises; he\nasked for the Governorship of Havre, which was then vacant. He was\nflatly refused. Disappointment gave rise to anger, and uniting with\nhis old flame, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who had received the same\ntreatment, and with the Duke of Beaufort, they formed a conspiracy\nagainst the government. The plot was, of course, discovered and crushed.\nBeaufort was arrested, the Duchesse banished. Irritated and disgusted,\nRochefoucauld went with the Duc d'Enghein, who was then joining the\narmy, on a campaign, and here he found the one love of his life, the\nDuke's sister, Mdme. de Longueville. This lady, young, beautiful, and\naccomplished, obtained a great ascendancy over Rochefoucauld, and was\nthe cause of his taking the side of Conde in the subsequent civil war.\nRochefoucauld did not stay long with the army. He was badly wounded at\nthe siege of Mardik, and returned from thence to Paris. On recovering\nfrom his wounds, the war of the Fronde broke out. This war is said\nto have been most ridiculous, as being carried on without a definite\nobject, a plan, or a leader. But this description is hardly correct; it\nwas the struggle of the French nobility against the rule of the Court;\nan attempt, the final attempt, to recover their lost influence over the\nstate, and to save themselves from sinking under the rule of cardinals\nand priests.\n\nWith the general history of that war we have nothing to do; it is far\ntoo complicated and too confused to be stated here. The memoirs of\nRochefoucauld and De Retz will give the details to those who desire to\ntrace the contests of the factions--the course of the intrigues. We may\nconfine ourselves to its progress so far as it relates to the Duc de la\nRochefoucauld.\n\nOn the Cardinal causing the Princes de Conde and Conti, and the Duc de\nLongueville, to be arrested, Rochefoucauld and the Duchess fled into\nNormandy. Leaving her at Dieppe, he went into Poitou, of which province\nhe had some years previously bought the post of governor. He was there\njoined by the Duc de Bouillon, and he and the Duke marched to, and\noccupied Bordeaux. Cardinal Mazarin and Marechal de la Meilleraie\nadvanced in force on Bordeaux, and attacked the town. A bloody battle\nfollowed. Rochefoucauld defended the town with the greatest bravery,\nand repulsed the Cardinal. Notwithstanding the repulse, the burghers of\nBordeaux were anxious to make peace, and save the city from destruction.\nThe Parliament of Bordeaux compelled Rochefoucauld to surrender. He did\nso, and returned nominally to Poitou, but in reality in secret to Paris.\n\nThere he found the Queen engaged in trying to maintain her position by\nplaying off the rival parties of the Prince Conde and the Cardinal\nDe Retz against each other. Rochefoucauld eagerly espoused his old\nparty--that of Conde. In August, 1651, the contending parties met in the\nHall of the Parliament of Paris, and it was with great difficulty they\nwere prevented from coming to blows even there. It is even said that\nRochefoucauld had ordered his followers to murder De Retz.\n\nRochefoucauld was soon to undergo a bitter disappointment. While\noccupied with party strife and faction in Paris, Madame de Chevreuse\nleft him, and formed an alliance with the Duc de Nemours. Rochefoucauld\nstill loved her. It was, probably, thinking of this that he afterwards\nwrote, \"Jealousy is born with love, but does not die with it.\" He\nendeavoured to get Madame de Chatillon, the old mistress of the Duc de\nNemours, reinstated in favour, but in this he did not succeed. The Duc\nde Nemours was soon after killed in a duel. The war went on, and after\nseveral indecisive skirmishes, the decisive battle was fought at Paris,\nin the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the Parisians first learnt the use\nor the abuse of their favourite defence, the barricade. In this battle,\nRochefoucauld behaved with great bravery. He was wounded in the head, a\nwound which for a time deprived him of his sight. Before he recovered,\nthe war was over, Louis XIV. had attained his majority, the gold of\nMazarin, the arms of Turenne, had been successful, the French nobility\nwere vanquished, the court supremacy established.\n\nThis completed Rochefoucauld's active life.\n\nWhen he recovered his health, he devoted himself to society. Madame\nde Sable assumed a hold over him. He lived a quiet life, and occupied\nhimself in composing an account of his early life, called his \"Memoirs,\"\nand his immortal \"Maxims.\"\n\nFrom the time he ceased to take part in public life, Rochefoucauld's\nreal glory began. Having acted the various parts of soldier, politician,\nand lover with but small success, he now commenced the part of moralist,\nby which he is known to the world.\n\nLiving in the most brilliant society that France possessed, famous\nfrom his writings, distinguished from the part he had taken in public\naffairs, he formed the centre of one of those remarkable French literary\nsocieties, a society which numbered among its members La Fontaine,\nRacine, Boileau. Among his most attached friends was Madame de\nLa Fayette (the authoress of the \"Princess of Cleeves\"), and this\nfriendship continued until his death. He was not, however, destined to\npass away in that gay society without some troubles. At the passage of\nthe Rhine in 1672 two of his sons were engaged; the one was killed, the\nother severely wounded. Rochefoucauld was much affected by this, but\nperhaps still more by the death of the young Duc de Longueville, who\nperished on the same occasion.\n\nSainte Beuve says that the cynical book and that young life were the\nonly fruits of the war of the Fronde. Madame de Sevigne, who was with\nhim when he heard the news of the death of so much that was dear to\nhim, says, \"I saw his heart laid bare on that cruel occasion, and his\ncourage, his merit, his tenderness, and good sense surpassed all I ever\nmet with. I hold his wit and accomplishments as nothing in comparison.\"\nThe combined effect of his wounds and the gout caused the last years of\nRochefoucauld's life to be spent in great pain. Madame de Sevigne,\nwho was {with} him continually during his last illness, speaks of the\nfortitude with which he bore his sufferings as something to be admired.\nWriting to her daughter, she says, \"Believe me, it is not for nothing he\nhas moralised all his life; he has thought so often on his last moments\nthat they are nothing new or unfamiliar to him.\"\n\nIn his last illness, the great moralist was attended by the great\ndivine, Bossuet. Whether that matchless eloquence or his own philosophic\ncalm had, in spite of his writings, brought him into the state Madame\nde Sevigne describes, we know not; but one, or both, contributed to\nhis passing away in a manner that did not disgrace a French noble or a\nFrench philosopher. On the 11th March, 1680, he ended his stormy life in\npeace after so much strife, a loyal subject after so much treason.\n\nOne of his friends, Madame Deshoulieres, shortly before he died sent\nhim an ode on death, which aptly describes his state-- \"Oui, soyez alors\nplus ferme, Que ces vulgaires humains Qui, pres de leur dernier terme,\nDe vaines terreurs sont pleins. En sage que rien n'offense, Livrez-vous\nsans resistance A d'inevitables traits; Et, d'une demarche egale, Passez\ncette onde fatal Qu'on ne repasse jamais.\"\n\nRochefoucauld left behind him only two works, the one, Memoirs of his\nown time, the other the Maxims. The first described the scenes in which\nhis youth had been spent, and though written in a lively style, and\ngiving faithful pictures of the intrigues and the scandals of the court\nduring Louis XIV.'s minority, yet, except to the historian, has ceased\nat the present day to be of much interest. It forms, perhaps, the true\nkey to understand the special as opposed to general application of the\nmaxims.\n\nNotwithstanding the assertion of Bayle, that \"there are few people so\nbigoted to antiquity as not to prefer the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld\nto the Commentaries of Caesar,\" or the statement of Voltaire, \"that the\nMemoirs are universally read and the Maxims are learnt by heart,\" few\npersons at the present day ever heard of the Memoirs, and the knowledge\nof most as to the Maxims is confined to that most celebrated of all,\nthough omitted from his last edition, \"There is something in the\nmisfortunes of our best friends which does not wholly displease us.\" Yet\nit is difficult to assign a cause for this; no book is perhaps oftener\nunwittingly quoted, none certainly oftener unblushingly pillaged; upon\nnone have so many contradictory opinions been given.\n\n\"Few books,\" says Mr. Hallam, \"have been more highly extolled, or more\nseverely blamed, than the maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld, and that\nnot only here, but also in France.\" Rousseau speaks of it as, \"a sad and\nmelancholy book,\" though he goes on to say \"it is usually so in youth\nwhen we do not like seeing man as he is.\" Voltaire says of it, in the\nwords above quoted, \"One of the works which most contributed to form the\ntaste of the (French) nation, and to give it a spirit of justness\nand precision, was the collection of the maxims of Francois Duc de la\nRochefoucauld, though there is scarcely more than one truth running\nthrough the book--that 'self-love is the motive of everything'--yet\nthis thought is presented under so many varied aspects that it is\nnearly always striking. It is not so much a book as it is materials for\nornamenting a book. This little collection was read with avidity, it\ntaught people to think, and to comprise their thoughts in a lively,\nprecise, and delicate turn of expression. This was a merit which, before\nhim, no one in Europe had attained since the revival of letters.\"\n\nDr. Johnson speaks of it as \"the only book written by a man of fashion,\nof which professed authors need be jealous.\"\n\nLord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, says, \"Till you come to\nknow mankind by your experience, I know no thing nor no man that can\nin the meantime bring you so well acquainted with them as Le Duc de la\nRochefoucauld. His little book of maxims, which I would advise you to\nlook into for some moments at least every day of your life, is, I fear,\ntoo like and too exact a picture of human nature. I own it seems to\ndegrade it, but yet my experience does not convince me that it degrades\nit unjustly.\"\n\nBishop Butler, on the other hand, blames the book in no measured terms.\n\"There is a strange affectation,\" says the bishop, \"in some people of\nexplaining away all particular affection, and representing the whole\nlife as nothing but one continued exercise of self-love. Hence arise\nthat surprising confusion and perplexity in the Epicureans of old,\nHobbes, the author of 'Reflexions Morales,' and the whole set of\nwriters, of calling actions interested which are done of the most\nmanifest known interest, merely for the gratification of a present\npassion.\"\n\nThe judgment the reader will be most inclined to adopt will perhaps be\neither that of Mr. Hallam, \"Concise and energetic in expression, reduced\nto those short aphorisms which leave much to the reader's acuteness and\nyet save his labour, not often obscure, and never wearisome, an evident\ngeneralisation of long experience, without pedantry, without method,\nwithout deductive reasonings, yet wearing an appearance at least of\nprofundity; they delight the intelligent though indolent man of the\nworld, and must be read with some admiration by the philosopher . . . .\nyet they bear witness to the contracted observation and the precipitate\ninferences which an intercourse with a single class of society scarcely\nfails to generate.\" Or that of Addison, who speaks of Rochefoucauld \"as\nthe great philosopher for administering consolation to the idle, the\ncurious, and the worthless part of mankind.\"\n\nWe are fortunately in possession of materials such as rarely exist to\nenable us to form a judgment of Rochefoucauld's character. We have, with\na vanity that could only exist in a Frenchman, a description or portrait\nof himself, of his own painting, and one of those inimitable living\nsketches in which his great enemy, Cardinal De Retz, makes all the chief\nactors in the court of the regency of Anne of Austria pass across the\nstage before us.\n\nWe will first look on the portrait Rochefoucauld has left us of himself:\n\"I am,\" says he, \"of a medium height, active, and well-proportioned. My\ncomplexion dark, but uniform, a high forehead; and of moderate height,\nblack eyes, small, deep set, eyebrows black and thick but well placed. I\nam rather embarrassed in talking of my nose, for it is neither flat nor\naquiline, nor large; nor pointed: but I believe, as far as I can say,\nit is too large than too small, and comes down just a trifle too low. I\nhave a large mouth, lips generally red enough, neither shaped well nor\nbadly. I have white teeth, and fairly even. I have been told I have\na little too much chin. I have just looked at myself in the glass to\nascertain the fact, and I do not know how to decide. As to the shape of\nmy face, it is either square or oval, but which I should find it very\ndifficult to say. I have black hair, which curls by nature, and thick\nand long enough to entitle me to lay claim to a fine head. I have in my\ncountenance somewhat of grief and pride, which gives many people an idea\nI despise them, although I am not at all given to do so. My gestures are\nvery free, rather inclined to be too much so, for in speaking they\nmake me use too much action. Such, candidly, I believe I am in outward\nappearance, and I believe it will be found that what I have said\nabove of myself is not far from the real case. I shall use the same\ntruthfulness in the remainder of my picture, for I have studied myself\nsufficiently to know myself well; and I will lack neither boldness to\nspeak as freely as I can of my good qualities, nor sincerity to freely\navow that I have faults.\n\n\"In the first place, to speak of my temper. I am melancholy, and I have\nhardly been seen for the last three or four years to laugh above three\nor four times. It seems to me that my melancholy would be even endurable\nand pleasant if I had none but what belonged to me constitutionally; but\nit arises from so many other causes, fills my imagination in such a way,\nand possesses my mind so strongly that for the greater part of my time\nI remain without speaking a word, or give no meaning to what I say. I am\nextremely reserved to those I do not know, and I am not very open with\nthe greater part of those I do. It is a fault I know well, and I should\nneglect no means to correct myself of it; but as a certain gloomy air I\nhave tends to make me seem more reserved than I am in fact, and as it is\nnot in our power to rid ourselves of a bad expression that arises from\na natural conformation of features, I think that even when I have cured\nmyself internally, externally some bad expression will always remain.\n\n\"I have ability. I have no hesitation in saying it, as for what purpose\nshould I pretend otherwise. So great circumvention, and so great\ndepreciation, in speaking of the gifts one has, seems to me to hide a\nlittle vanity under an apparent modesty, and craftily to try to make\nothers believe in greater virtues than are imputed to us. On my part\nI am content not to be considered better-looking than I am, nor of a\nbetter temper than I describe, nor more witty and clever than I am. Once\nmore, I have ability, but a mind spoilt by melancholy, for though I\nknow my own language tolerably well, and have a good memory, a mode\nof thought not particularly confused, I yet have so great a mixture of\ndiscontent that I often say what I have to say very badly.\n\n\"The conversation of gentlemen is one of the pleasures that most amuses\nme. I like it to be serious and morality to form the substance of it.\nYet I also know how to enjoy it when trifling; and if I do not make\nmany witty speeches, it is not because I do not appreciate the value of\ntrifles well said, and that I do not find great amusement in that manner\nof raillery in which certain prompt and ready-witted persons excel so\nwell. I write well in prose; I do well in verse; and if I was envious of\nthe glory that springs from that quarter, I think with a little labour\nI could acquire some reputation. I like reading, in general; but that in\nwhich one finds something to polish the wit and strengthen the soul\nis what I like best. But, above all, I have the greatest pleasure in\nreading with an intelligent person, for then we reflect constantly upon\nwhat we read, and the observations we make form the most pleasant and\nuseful form of conversation there is.\n\n\"I am a fair critic of the works in verse and prose that are shown me;\nbut perhaps I speak my opinion with almost too great freedom. Another\nfault in me is that I have sometimes a spirit of delicacy far too\nscrupulous, and a spirit of criticism far too severe. I do not dislike\nan argument, and I often of my own free will engage in one; but I\ngenerally back my opinion with too much warmth, and sometimes, when the\nwrong side is advocated against me, from the strength of my zeal for\nreason, I become a little unreasonable myself.\n\n\"I have virtuous sentiments, good inclinations, and so strong a desire\nto be a wholly good man that my friend cannot afford me a greater\npleasure than candidly to show me my faults. Those who know me most\nintimately, and those who have the goodness sometimes to give me the\nabove advice, know that I always receive it with all the joy that could\nbe expected, and with all reverence of mind that could be desired.\n\n\"I have all the passions pretty mildly, and pretty well under control.\nI am hardly ever seen in a rage, and I never hated any one. I am not,\nhowever, incapable of avenging myself if I have been offended, or if my\nhonour demanded I should resent an insult put upon me; on the contrary,\nI feel clear that duty would so well discharge the office of hatred in\nme that I should follow my revenge with even greater keenness than other\npeople.\n\n\"Ambition does not weary me. I fear but few things, and I do not fear\ndeath in the least. I am but little given to pity, and I could wish I\nwas not so at all. Though there is nothing I would not do to comfort an\nafflicted person, and I really believe that one should do all one can to\nshow great sympathy to him for his misfortune, for miserable people are\nso foolish that this does them the greatest good in the world; yet\nI also hold that we should be content with expressing sympathy, and\ncarefully avoid having any. It is a passion that is wholly worthless in\na well-regulated mind, which only serves to weaken the heart, and which\nshould be left to ordinary persons, who, as they never do anything from\nreason, have need of passions to stimulate their actions.\n\n\"I love my friends; and I love them to such an extent that I would not\nfor a moment weigh my interest against theirs. I condescend to them,\nI patiently endure their bad temper. But, also, I do not make much of\ntheir caresses, and I do not feel great uneasiness in their absence.\n\n\"Naturally, I have but little curiosity about the majority of things\nthat stir up curiosity in other men. I am very secret, and I have less\ndifficulty than most men in holding my tongue as to what is told me in\nconfidence. I am most particular as to my word, and I would never fail,\nwhatever might be the consequence, to do what I had promised; and I have\nmade this an inflexible law during the whole of my life.\n\n\"I keep the most punctilious civility to women. I do not believe I have\never said anything before them which could cause them annoyance. When\ntheir intellect is cultivated, I prefer their society to that of men:\none there finds a mildness one does not meet with among ourselves,\nand it seems to me beyond this that they express themselves with more\nneatness, and give a more agreeable turn to the things they talk about.\nAs for flirtation, I formerly indulged in a little, now I shall do so no\nmore, though I am still young. I have renounced all flirtation, and I am\nsimply astonished that there are still so many sensible people who can\noccupy their time with it.\n\n\"I wholly approve of real loves; they indicate greatness of soul, and\nalthough, in the uneasiness they give rise to, there is a something\ncontrary to strict wisdom, they fit in so well with the most severe\nvirtue, that I believe they cannot be censured with justice. To me who\nhave known all that is fine and grand in the lofty aspirations of love,\nif I ever fall in love, it will assuredly be in love of that nature. But\nin accordance with the present turn of my mind, I do not believe that\nthe knowledge I have of it will ever change from my mind to my heart.\"\n\nSuch is his own description of himself. Let us now turn to the other\npicture, delineated by the man who was his bitterest enemy, and whom (we\nsay it with regret) Rochefoucauld tried to murder.\n\nCardinal De Retz thus paints him:-- \"In M. de la Rochefoucauld there was\never an indescribable something. From his infancy he always wanted to\nbe mixed up with plots, at a time when he could not understand even\nthe smallest interests (which has indeed never been his weak point,)\nor comprehend greater ones, which in another sense has never been his\nstrong point. He was never fitted for any matter, and I really cannot\ntell the reason. His glance was not sufficiently wide, and he could not\ntake in at once all that lay in his sight, but his good sense, perfect\nin theories, combined with his gentleness, his winning ways, his\npleasing manners, which are perfect, should more than compensate for\nhis lack of penetration. He always had a natural irresoluteness, but I\ncannot say to what this irresolution is to be attributed. It could not\narise in him from the wealth of his imagination, for that was anything\nbut lively. I cannot put it down to the barrenness of his judgment, for,\nalthough he was not prompt in action, he had a good store of reason. We\nsee the effects of this irresolution, although we cannot assign a\ncause for it. He was never a general, though a great soldier; never,\nnaturally, a good courtier, although he had always a good idea of being\nso. He was never a good partizan, although all his life engaged in\nintrigues. That air of pride and timidity which your see in his private\nlife, is turned in business into an apologetic manner. He always\nbelieved he had need of it; and this, combined with his 'Maxims,' which\nshow little faith in virtue, and his habitual custom, to give up matters\nwith the same haste he undertook them, leads me to the conclusion that\nhe would have done far better to have known his own mind, and have\npassed himself off, as he could have done, for the most polished\ncourtier, the most agreeable man in private life that had appeared in\nhis century.\"\n\nIt is but justice to the Cardinal to say, that the Duc is not painted in\nsuch dark colours as we should have expected, judging from what we know\nof the character of De Retz. With his marvellous power of depicting\ncharacter, a power unrivalled, except by St. Simon and perhaps by Lord\nClarendon, we should have expected the malignity of the priest would\nhave stamped the features of his great enemy with the impress of infamy,\nand not have simply made him appear a courtier, weak, insincere,\nand nothing more. Though rather beyond our subject, the character of\nCardinal de Retz, as delineated by Mdme. Sevigne, in one of her letters,\nwill help us to form a true conclusion on the different characters of\nthe Duc and the Cardinal. She says:-- \"Paul de Gondi Cardinal de Retz\npossesses great elevation of character, a certain extent of intellect,\nand more of the ostentation than of the true greatness of courage. He\nhas an extraordinary memory, more energy than polish in his words, an\neasy humour, docility of character, and weakness in submitting to\nthe complaints and reproaches of his friends, a little piety, some\nappearances of religion. He appears ambitious without being really so.\nVanity and those who have guided him, have made him undertake great\nthings, almost all opposed to his profession. He excited the greatest\ntroubles in the State without any design of turning them to account, and\nfar from declaring himself the enemy of Cardinal Mazarin with any view\nof occupying his place, he thought of nothing but making himself an\nobject of dread to him, and flattering himself with the false vanity of\nbeing his rival. He was clever enough, however, to take advantage of\nthe public calamities to get himself made Cardinal. He endured his\nimprisonment with firmness, and owed his liberty solely to his own\ndaring. In the obscurity of a life of wandering and concealment, his\nindolence for many years supported him with reputation. He preserved the\nArchbishopric of Paris against the power of Cardinal Mazarin, but after\nthe death of that minister, he resigned it without knowing what he\nwas doing, and without making use of the opportunity to promote the\ninterests of himself and his friends. He has taken part in several\nconclaves, and his conduct has always increased his reputation.\n\n\"His natural bent is to indolence, nevertheless he labours with\nactivity in pressing business, and reposes with indifference when it is\nconcluded. He has great presence of mind, and knows so well how to turn\nit to his own advantage on all occasions presented him by fortune,\nthat it would seem as if he had foreseen and desired them. He loves\nto narrate, and seeks to dazzle all his listeners indifferently by his\nextraordinary adventures, and his imagination often supplies him with\nmore than his memory. The generality of his qualities are false, and\nwhat has most contributed to his reputation is his power of throwing\na good light on his faults. He is insensible alike to hatred and to\nfriendship, whatever pains he may be at to appear taken up with the one\nor the other. He is incapable of envy or avarice, whether from virtue or\nfrom carelessness. He has borrowed more from his friends than a private\nperson could ever hope to be able to repay; he has felt the vanity of\nacquiring so much on credit, and of undertaking to discharge it. He has\nneither taste nor refinement; he is amused by everything and pleased\nby nothing. He avoids difficult matters with considerable address,\nnot allowing people to penetrate the slight acquaintance he has with\neverything. The retreat he has just made from the world is the most\nbrilliant and the most unreal action of his life; it is a sacrifice he\nhas made to his pride under the pretence of devotion; he quits the court\nto which he cannot attach himself, and retires from a world which is\nretiring from him.\"\n\nThe Maxims were first published in 1665, with a preface by Segrais.\nThis preface was omitted in the subsequent editions. The first edition\ncontained 316 maxims, counting the last upon death, which was not\nnumbered. The second in 1666 contained only 102; the third in 1671, and\nthe fourth in 1675, 413. In this last edition we first meet with the\nintroductory maxim, \"Our virtues are generally but disguised vices.\" The\nedition of 1678, the fifth, increased the number to 504. This was the\nlast edition revised by the author, and published in his lifetime. The\ntext of that edition has been used for the present translation. The next\nedition, the sixth, was published in 1693, about thirteen years after\nthe author's death. This edition included fifty new maxims, attributed\nby the editor to Rochefoucauld. Most likely they were his writing, as\nthe fact was never denied by his family, through whose permission they\nwere published. They form the third supplement to the translation. This\nsixth edition was published by Claude Barbin, and the French editions\nsince that time have been too numerous to be enumerated. The great\npopularity of the Maxims is perhaps best shown from the numerous\ntranslations that have been made of them. No less than eight English\ntranslations, or so-called translations, have appeared; one American, a\nSwedish, and a Spanish translation, an Italian imitation, with parallel\npassages, and an English imitation by Hazlitt. The titles of the English\neditions are as follows:-- i. Seneca Unmasked. By Mrs. Aphara Behn.\nLondon, 1689. She calls the author the Duke of Rushfucave. ii. Moral\nMaxims and Reflections, in four parts. By the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.\nNow made English. London, 1694. 12 mo. iii. Moral Maxims and Reflections\nof the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Newly made English. London, 1706. 12\nmo. iv. Moral Maxims of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Translated\nfrom the French. With notes. London, 1749. 12 mo. v. Maxims and Moral\nReflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Revised and improved.\nLondon, 1775. 8 vo. vi. Maxims and Moral Reflections of the Duke de la\nRochefoucauld. A new edition, revised and improved, by L. D. London,\n1781. 8 vo. vii. The Gentleman's Library. La Rochefoucauld's Maxims\nand Moral Reflections. London, 1813. 12 mo. viii. Moral Reflections,\nSentences, and Maxims of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, newly translated\nfrom the French; with an introduction and notes. London, 1850. 16 mo.\nix. Maxims and Moral Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld: with a\nMemoir by the Chevalier de Chatelain. London, 1868. 12 mo.\n\nThe perusal of the Maxims will suggest to every reader to a greater\nor less degree, in accordance with the extent of his reading, parallel\npassages, and similar ideas. Of ancient writers Rochefoucauld most\nstrongly reminds us of Tacitus; of modern writers, Junius most strongly\nreminds us of Rochefoucauld. Some examples from both are given in the\nnotes to this translation. It is curious to see how the expressions\nof the bitterest writer of English political satire to a great extent\nexpress the same ideas as the great French satirist of private life.\nHad space permitted the parallel could have been drawn very closely, and\nmuch of the invective of Junius traced to its source in Rochefoucauld.\n\nOne of the persons whom Rochefoucauld patronised and protected, was\nthe great French fabulist, La Fontaine. This patronage was repaid by\nLa Fontaine giving, in one of his fables, \"L'Homme et son Image,\" an\nelaborate defence of his patron. After there depicting a man who fancied\nhimself one of the most lovely in the world, and who complained he\nalways found all mirrors untrustworthy, at last discovered his real\nimage reflected in the water. He thus applies his fable:-- \"Je parle\na tous: et cette erreur extreme, Est un mal que chacun se plait\nd'entretenir, Notre ame, c'est cet homme amoureux de lui meme, Tant\nde miroirs, ce sont les sottises d'autrui. Miroirs, de nos defauts les\npeintres legitimes, Et quant au canal, c'est celui Qui chacun sait, le\nlivre des MAXIMES.\"\n\nIt is just this: the book is a mirror in which we all see ourselves.\nThis has made it so unpopular. It is too true. We dislike to be told\nof our faults, while we only like to be told of our neighbour's.\nNotwithstanding Rousseau's assertion, it is young men, who, before they\nknow their own faults and only know their neighbours', that read and\nthoroughly appreciate Rochefoucauld.\n\nAfter so many varied opinions he then pleases us more and seems far\ntruer than he is in reality, it is impossible to give any general\nconclusion of such distinguished writers on the subject. Each reader\nwill form his own opinion of the merits of the author and his book. To\nsome, both will seem deserving of the highest praise; to others both\nwill seem deserving of the highest censure. The truest judgment as to\nthe author will be found in the remarks of a countryman of his own, as\nto the book in the remarks of a countryman of ours.\n\nAs to the author, M. Sainte Beuve says:--\"C'etait un misanthrope poli,\ninsinuant, souriant, qui precedait de bien peu et preparait avec charme\nl'autre MISANTHROPE.\"\n\nAs to the book, Mr. Hallam says:--\"Among the books in ancient and\nmodern times which record the conclusions of observing men on the moral\nqualities of their fellows, a high place should be reserved for the\nMaxims of Rochefoucauld\".\n\n\n\n\nREFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS\n\nOur virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.\n\n[This epigraph which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is\nfound in another form as No. 179 of the maxims of the first edition,\n1665, it is omitted from the 2nd and 3rd, and reappears for the first\ntime in the 4th edition, in 1675, as at present, at the head of the\nReflections.--Aime Martin. Its best answer is arrived at by reversing\nthe predicate and the subject, and you at once form a contradictory\nmaxim equally true, our vices are most frequently but virtues\ndisguised.]\n\n\n1.--What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and\ndivers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange;\nand it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave,\nand women chaste.\n\n\"Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like\nthe meanest slave; Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise, His pride\nin reasoning, not in acting, lies.\" Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. i. line 115.\n\n\n2.--Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.\n\n\n3.--Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love,\nthere remain many unexplored territories there.\n\n[This is the first hint of the system the author tries to develope. He\nwishes to find in vice a motive for all our actions, but this does not\nsuffice him; he is obliged to call other passions to the help of his\nsystem and to confound pride, vanity, interest and egotism with self\nlove. This confusion destroys the unity of his principle.--Aime Martin.]\n\n\n4.--Self love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.\n\n\n5.--The duration of our passions is no more dependant upon us than the\nduration of our life. [Then what becomes of free will?--Aime; Martin]\n\n\n6.--Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes\nrenders the most foolish man clever.\n\n\n7.--Great and striking actions which dazzle the eyes are represented by\npoliticians as the effect of great designs, instead of which they are\ncommonly caused by the temper and the passions. Thus the war between\nAugustus and Anthony, which is set down to the ambition they entertained\nof making themselves masters of the world, was probably but an effect of\njealousy.\n\n\n8.--The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are\na natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man\nwith passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.\n\n[See Maxim 249 which is an illustration of this.]\n\n\n9.--The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which\nmakes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust\nthem even when they appear most trustworthy.\n\n\n10.--In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions; so\nthat the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.\n\n\n11.--Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to\nprodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through\nweakness and daring though timidity.\n\n\n12.--Whatever care we take to conceal our passions under the appearances\nof piety and honour, they are always to be seen through these veils.\n\n[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps better--\"however\nwe may conceal our passions under the veil, etc., there is always some\nplace where they peep out.\"]\n\n\n13.--Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our\ntastes than of our opinions.\n\n\n14.--Men are not only prone to forget benefits and injuries; they even\nhate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have\ninjured them. The necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing a\nbenefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.\n\n\n15.--The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections\nof the people.\n\n\n[\"So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly\ndoes it raise their fame and endear them to their subjects, that it\nis generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying\nit.\"--Montesquieu, Esprit Des Lois, Lib. VI., C. 21.]\n\n\n16.--This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from\nvanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always\nfrom all three combined.\n\n[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which he lived. Here\nthe clemency spoken of is nothing more than an expression of the policy\nof Anne of Austria. Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the\nfavour of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she bestowed\nher favours upon those she hated; her friends were forgotten.--Aime\nMartin. The reader will hereby see that the age in which the writer\nlived best interprets his maxims.]\n\n\n17.--The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which\ngood fortune bestows upon their temper.\n\n\n18.--Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt\nwhich those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a\nvain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men\nat their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their\nfortune.\n\n\n19.--We have all sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of\nothers.\n\n[The strongest example of this is the passage in Lucretius, lib. ii.,\nline I:-- \"Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis E terra magnum\nalterius spectare laborem.\"]\n\n\n20.--The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the\nagitation of their hearts.\n\n[Thus wisdom is only hypocrisy, says a commentator. This definition of\nconstancy is a result of maxim 18.]\n\n\n21.--Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and\ncontempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may\nsay that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage\nis to their eyes.\n\n[See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]\n\n\n22.--Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but\npresent evils triumph over it.\n\n\n23.--Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from\ndetermination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die\nbecause they know not how to prevent dying.\n\n\n24.--When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance\nof misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition,\nand not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like\nother men.\n\n[Both these maxims have been rewritten and made conciser by the author;\nthe variations are not worth quoting.]\n\n\n25.--We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.\n\n[\"Prosperity do{th} best discover vice, but adversity do{th} best\ndiscover virtue.\"--Lord Bacon, Essays{, (1625), \"Of Adversity\"}.]\n\n{The quotation wrongly had \"does\" for \"doth\".}\n\n\n26.--Neither the sun nor death can be looked at without winking.\n\n\n27.--People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but\nenvy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow\nher.\n\n\n28.--Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable, as it tends to\npreserve a good which belongs, or which we believe belongs to us, on the\nother hand envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of others.\n\n\n29.--The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and\nhatred as our good qualities.\n\n\n30.--We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an\nexcuse we say things are impossible.\n\n\n31.--If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting\nthose of others.\n\n\n32.--Jealousy lives upon doubt; and comes to an end or becomes a fury as\nsoon as it passes from doubt to certainty.\n\n\n33.--Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away\nvanity.\n\n[See maxim 450, where the author states, what we take from our other\nfaults we add to our pride.]\n\n\n34.--If we had no pride we should not complain of that of others.\n\n[\"The proud are ever most provoked by pride.\"--Cowper, Conversation\n160.]\n\n\n35.--Pride is much the same in all men, the only difference is the\nmethod and manner of showing it.\n\n[\"Pride bestowed on all a common friend.\"--Pope, Essay On Man, Ep. ii.,\nline 273.]\n\n\n36.--It would seem that nature, which has so wisely ordered the organs\nof our body for our happiness, has also given us pride to spare us the\nmortification of knowing our imperfections.\n\n\n37.--Pride has a larger part than goodness in our remonstrances with\nthose who commit faults, and we reprove them not so much to correct as\nto persuade them that we ourselves are free from faults.\n\n\n38.--We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our\nfears.\n\n[\"The reason why the Cardinal (Mazarin) deferred so long to grant the\nfavours he had promised, was because he was persuaded that hope was much\nmore capable of keeping men to their duty than gratitude.\"--Fragments\nHistoriques. Racine.]\n\n\n39.--Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of\ncharacters; even that of disinterestedness.\n\n\n40.--Interest blinds some and makes some see.\n\n\n41.--Those who apply themselves too closely to little things often\nbecome incapable of great things.\n\n\n42.--We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.\n\n\n43.--A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind\nendeavours to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards\nanother.\n\n\n44.--Strength and weakness of mind are mis-named; they are really only\nthe good or happy arrangement of our bodily organs.\n\n\n45.--The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of\nFortune.\n\n\n46.--The attachment or indifference which philosophers have shown to\nlife is only the style of their self love, about which we can no more\ndispute than of that of the palate or of the choice of colours.\n\n\n47.--Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from\nfortune.\n\n\n48.--Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we\nare happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others\nlike.\n\n\n49.--We are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose.\n\n\n50.--Those who think they have merit persuade themselves that they are\nhonoured by being unhappy, in order to persuade others and themselves\nthat they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.\n\n\n[\"Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort\nthat they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we\ncannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take\na complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one\nkind or other.\" --Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I,\nSect. XVII}.]\n\n{The translators' incorrectly cite Speech On Conciliation With America.\nAlso, Burke does not actually write \"Ambition has been...\", he writes\n\"It has been...\" when speaking of ambition.}\n\n\n51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfaction which we feel\nwith ourselves as seeing that we disapprove at one time of that which we\napprove of at another.\n\n\n52.--Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is\nnevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them\nequal.\n\n\n53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give, it is not she alone, but\nfortune also that makes the hero.\n\n\n54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to\navenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the\nvery goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard\nthemselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by\nwhich to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.\n\n[\"It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior ranks of\nmankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure\nwhich fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive\nChristians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded\nby poverty and ignorance.\"--Gibbon, Decline And Fall, Chap. 15.]\n\n\n55.--The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT\npossessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it\nevinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not\nbeing able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the\nworld.\n\n\n56.--To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as\nif we were established.\n\n\n57.--Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are\nnot so often the result of a great design as of chance.\n\n\n58.--It would seem that our actions have lucky or unlucky stars to which\nthey owe a great part of the blame or praise which is given them.\n\n\n59.--There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skilful men will\nnot draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn\nthem to their hurt.\n\n\n60.--Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she\nsmiles.\n\n\n61.--The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their\ndispositions than their fortunes.\n\n[\"Still to ourselves in every place consigned Our own felicity we make\nor find.\" Goldsmith, Traveller, 431.]\n\n\n62.--Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few\npeople; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the\nconfidence of others.\n\n\n63.--The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our\nwords credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our\nconversation.\n\n\n64.--Truth does not do as much good in the world, as its counterfeits do\nevil.\n\n\n65.--There is no praise we have not lavished upon Prudence; and yet she\ncannot assure to us the most trifling event.\n\n[The author corrected this maxim several times, in 1665 it is No.\n75; 1666, No. 66; 1671-5, No. 65; in the last edition it stands as at\npresent. In the first he quotes Juvenal, Sat. X., line 315. \" Nullum\nnumen habes si sit Prudentia, nos te; Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam,\ncoeloque locamus.\" Applying to Prudence what Juvenal does to Fortune,\nand with much greater force.]\n\n\n66.--A clever man ought to so regulate his interests that each will fall\nin due order. Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after\nso many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after\nthe least we miss the greatest.\n\n\n67.--What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.\n\n\n68.--It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul\nit is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body\nit is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love--Plus many\nmysteries.\n\n[\"Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly\nbeloved.\"--Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]\n\n{Two notes about this quotation: (1) the translators' mistakenly\nhave \"singularity\" for the first \"singularly\" and (2) Hobbes does not\nactually write \"Love is the...\"--he writes \"Love of one...\" under the\nheading \"The passion of Love.\"}\n\n\n69.--If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other\npassions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and\nof which even ourselves are ignorant.\n\n\n70.--There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor\nfeign it where it does not.\n\n\n71.--There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when\nthey love no longer.\n\n\n72.--If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather\nresembles hatred than friendship.\n\n\n73.--We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is\nrare to find those who have intrigued but once.\n\n[\"Yet there are some, they say, who have had None}; But those who\nhave, ne'er end with only one}.\" {--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, {Canto} iii.,\nstanza 4.]\n\n\n74.--There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different\ncopies.\n\n\n75.--Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both\ncease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.\n\n[So Lord Byron{Stanzas, (1819), stanza 3} says of Love-- \"Like chiefs of\nfaction, His life is action.\"]\n\n\n76.--There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person\nspeaks of it, few persons have seen it.\n\n[\"Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- An unseen seraph, we believe\nin thee-- A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,-- But never yet\nhath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form as it should be.\"\n{--Lord Byron, }Childe Harold, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]\n\n\n77.--Love lends its name to an infinite number of engagements\n(Commerces) which are attributed to it, but with which it has no more\nconcern than the Doge has with all that is done in Venice.\n\n\n78.--The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of\nsuffering injustice.\n\n\n79.--Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself.\n\n\n80.--What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is\ndifficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of\nthe mind.\n\n\n81.--We can love nothing but what agrees with us, and we can only follow\nour taste or our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves;\nnevertheless it is only by that preference that friendship can be true\nand perfect.\n\n\n82.--Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire to better our\ncondition, a weariness of war, the fear of some unlucky accident.\n\n[\"Thus terminated that famous war of the Fronde. The Duke de la\nRochefoucauld desired peace because of his dangerous wounds and ruined\ncastles, which had made him dread even worse events. On the other side\nthe Queen, who had shown herself so ungrateful to her too ambitious\nfriends, did not cease to feel the bitterness of their resentment. 'I\nwish,' said she, 'it were always night, because daylight shows me so\nmany who have betrayed me.'\"--Memoires De Madame De Motteville, Tom.\nIV., p. 60. Another proof that although these maxims are in some cases\nof universal application, they were based entirely on the experience of\nthe age in which the author lived.]\n\n\n83.--What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection\nof reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours--in fact it is but a\ntrade in which self love always expects to gain something.\n\n\n84.--It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our\nfriends.\n\n\n85.--We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful\nthan we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give\nour hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to\nreceive.\n\n\n86.--Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.\n\n\n87.--Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each\nother.\n\n[A maxim, adds Aime Martin, \"Which may enter into the code of a vulgar\nrogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise.\" Yet we\nhave scriptural authority for it: \"Deceiving and being deceived.\"--2\nTIM. iii. 13.]\n\n\n88.--Self love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our\nfriends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them, and we\njudge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.\n\n\n89.--Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.\n\n\n90.--In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by\nour good qualities.\n\n\n91.--The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it\nmeets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.\n\n\n92.--To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him\nas bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in\nbelieving that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.\n\n[That is, they cured him. The madman was Thrasyllus, son of Pythodorus.\nHis brother Crito cured him, when he infinitely regretted the time of\nhis more pleasant madness.--See Aelian, Var. Hist. iv. 25. So Horace--\n------------\"Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis,\" ait, \"cui sic\nextorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.\" HOR. EP.\nii--2, 138, of the madman who was cured of a pleasant lunacy.]\n\n\n93.--Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact\nthat they can no longer set bad examples.\n\n\n94.--Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to\nsustain them.\n\n\n95.--The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the\nmost yet obliged to praise it.\n\n\n96.--A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with\ningratitude than his benefactor is.\n\n\n97.--We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two\ndifferent matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind.\nThis light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can\nbe remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must\nagree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all\nthe effects which we attribute to judgment.\n\n\n98.--Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.\n\n\n99.--Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined\nthoughts.\n\n\n100.--Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty things in an agreeable\nmanner.\n\n\n101.--Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could\nmake them after much labour.\n\n\n102.--The head is ever the dupe of the heart.\n\n[A feeble imitation of that great thought \"All folly comes from\nthe heart.\"--Aime Martin. But Bonhome, in his L'art De Penser, says\n\"Plusieurs diraient en periode quarre que quelques reflexions que fasse\nl'esprit et quelques resolutions qu'il prenne pour corriger ses travers\nle premier sentiment du coeur renverse tous ses projets. Mais il\nn'appartient qu'a M. de la Rochefoucauld de dire tout en un mot que\nl'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur.\"]\n\n\n103.--Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts.\n\n\n104.--Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge\nrightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never\njudge rightly but at a distance.\n\n\n105.--A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being.\nA man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.\n\n\n106.--To understand matters rightly we should understand their details,\nand as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always\nsuperficial and imperfect.\n\n\n107.--One kind of flirtation is to boast we never flirt.\n\n\n108.--The head cannot long play the part of the heart.\n\n\n109.--Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood, age retains\nits tastes by habit.\n\n\n110.--Nothing is given so profusely as advice.\n\n\n111.--The more we love a woman the more prone we are to hate her.\n\n\n112.--The blemishes of the mind, like those of the face, increase by\nage.\n\n\n113.--There may be good but there are no pleasant marriages.\n\n\n114.--We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and betrayed\nby our friends, yet still we are often content to be thus served by\nourselves.\n\n\n115.--It is as easy unwittingly to deceive oneself as to deceive others.\n\n\n116.--Nothing is less sincere than the way of asking and giving advice.\nThe person asking seems to pay deference to the opinion of his friend,\nwhile thinking in reality of making his friend approve his opinion and\nbe responsible for his conduct. The person giving the advice returns the\nconfidence placed in him by eager and disinterested zeal, in doing which\nhe is usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.\n\n[\"I have often thought how ill-natured a maxim it was which on many\noccasions I have heard from people of good understanding, 'That as to\nwhat related to private conduct no one was ever the better for advice.'\nBut upon further examination I have resolved with myself that the maxim\nmight be admitted without any violent prejudice to mankind. For in\nthe manner advice was generally given there was no reason I thought to\nwonder it should be so ill received, something there was which strangely\ninverted the case, and made the giver to be the only gainer. For by what\nI could observe in many occurrences of our lives, that which we called\ngiving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom\nat another's expense. On the other side to be instructed or to receive\nadvice on the terms usually prescribed to us was little better than\ntamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character\nfrom our defects.\"--Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics, i., 153.]\n\n\n117.--The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares\nthat we know are set for us. We are never so easily deceived as when\ntrying to deceive.\n\n\n118.--The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.\n\n\n119.--We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at\nlast we are disguised to ourselves.\n\n[\"Those who quit their proper character{,} to assume what does not\nbelong to them, are{,} for the greater part{,} ignorant both of the\ncharacter they leave{,} and of the character they assume.\"--Burke,\n{Reflections On The Revolution In France, (1790), Paragraph 19}.]\n\n{The translators' incorrectly cite Thoughts On The Cause Of The Present\nDiscontents.}\n\n\n120.--We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed\nmotive.\n\n\n121.--We frequently do good to enable us with impunity to do evil.\n\n\n122.--If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than\nfrom our strength.\n\n\n123.--If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.\n\n\n124.--The most deceitful persons spend their lives in blaming deceit, so\nas to use it on some great occasion to promote some great interest.\n\n\n125.--The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally\nhappens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves\nlay themselves open to attack in another.\n\n[\"With that low cunning which in fools supplies, And amply, too, the\nplace of being wise.\" Churchill, Rosciad, 117.]\n\n\n126.--Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.\n\n\n127.--The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than\nothers.\n\n\n128.--Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is\nthe most substantial cleverness.\n\n\n129.--It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived\nby cunning men.\n\n\n130.--Weakness is the only fault which cannot be cured.\n\n\n131.--The smallest fault of women who give themselves up to love is to\nlove. [------\"Faciunt graviora coactae Imperio sexus minimumque libidine\npeccant.\" Juvenal, Sat. vi., 134.]\n\n\n132.--It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself.\n\n[Hence the proverb, \"A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his\nclient.\"]\n\n\n133.--The only good examples are those, that make us see the absurdity\nof bad originals.\n\n\n134.--We are never so ridiculous from the habits we have as from those\nthat we affect to have.\n\n\n135.--We sometimes differ more widely from ourselves than we do from\nothers.\n\n\n136.--There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard\nit spoken of.\n\n\n137.--When not prompted by vanity we say little.\n\n\n138.--A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing.\n\n[\"Montaigne's vanity led him to talk perpetually of himself, and as\noften happens to vain men, he would rather talk of his own failings than\nof any foreign subject.\"-- Hallam, Literature Of Europe.]\n\n\n139.--One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and\nagreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think\nmore of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. The\nmost clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we\nperceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering\nfrom what is said and desire to return to what they want to say. Instead\nof considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try\nthus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer\nwell are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation.\n\n[\"An absent man can make but few observations, he can pursue nothing\nsteadily because his absences make him lose his way. They are very\ndisagreeable and hardly to be tolerated in old age, but in youth they\ncannot be forgiven.\" --Lord Chesterfield, Letter 195.]\n\n\n140.--If it was not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be\ngreatly at a loss.\n\n\n141.--We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so\nconceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.\n\n\n142.--As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few\nwords, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.\n\n[\"So much they talked, so very little said.\" Churchill, Rosciad, 550.\n\n\"Men who are unequal to the labour of discussing an argument or wish\nto avoid it, are willing enough to suppose that much has been proved\nbecause much has been said.\"-- Junius, Jan. 1769.]\n\n\n143.--It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we\nexaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we\npraise them we wish to attract their praise.\n\n\n144.--We do not like to praise, and we never praise without a\nmotive. Praise is flattery, artful, hidden, delicate, which gratifies\ndifferently him who praises and him who is praised. The one takes it as\nthe reward of merit, the other bestows it to show his impartiality and\nknowledge.\n\n\n145.--We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those\nwe praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.\n\n\n146.--Usually we only praise to be praised.\n\n\n147.--Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to\npraise which is treacherous.\n\n\n148.--Some reproaches praise; some praises reproach.\n\n[\"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering,\nteach the rest to sneer.\" Pope {Essay On Man, (1733), Epistle To Dr.\nArbuthnot.}]\n\n\n149.--The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.\n\n[The modesty which pretends to refuse praise is but in truth a desire to\nbe praised more highly. Edition 1665.]\n\n\n150.--The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our\ngood qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to\nincrease them.\n\n\n151.--It is easier to govern others than to prevent being governed.\n\n\n152.--If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not\nhurt us.\n\n[\"Adulatione servilia fingebant securi de fragilitate credentis.\" Tacit.\nAnn. xvi.]\n\n\n153.--Nature makes merit but fortune sets it to work.\n\n\n154.--Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.\n\n\n155.--There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities,\nthere are persons who please even with their faults.\n\n\n156.--There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing\nstupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their\nmanners.\n\n\n157.--The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means\nused to acquire it.\n\n\n158.--Flattery is base coin to which only our vanity gives currency.\n\n\n159.--It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the\nmanagement of them.\n\n\n160.--However brilliant an action it should not be esteemed great unless\nthe result of a great motive.\n\n\n161.--A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we\ndesire to estimate the effects that they produce.\n\n\n162.--The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and\noften acquires more reputation than real brilliancy.\n\n\n163.--Numberless arts appear foolish whose secre{t} motives are most\nwise and weighty.\n\n\n164.--It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for\nthose we do.\n\n\n165.--Ability wins us the esteem of the true men, luck that of the\npeople.\n\n\n166.--The world oftener rewards the appearance of merit than merit\nitself.\n\n\n167.--Avarice is more opposed to economy than to liberality.\n\n\n168.--However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to\nthe end of life.\n\n[\"Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.\" Pope: Essay On Man,\nEp. ii.]\n\n\n169.--Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue\noften gets the praise.\n\n[\"Quod segnitia erat sapientia vocaretur.\" Tacitus Hist. I.]\n\n\n170.--If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide\nwhether it is the effect of integrity or skill.\n\n\n171.--As rivers are lost in the sea so are virtues in self.\n\n\n172.--If we thoroughly consider the varied effects of indifference we\nfind we miscarry more in our duties than in our interests.\n\n\n173.--There are different kinds of curiosity: one springs from interest,\nwhich makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us;\nanother from pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what others\nare ignorant of.\n\n\n174.--It is far better to accustom our mind to bear the ills we have\nthan to speculate on those which may befall us.\n\n[\"Rather bear th{ose} ills we have Than fly to others that we know not\nof.\" {--Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, Hamlet.}]\n\n\n175.--Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which causes our\nheart to attach itself to all the qualities of the person we love\nin succession, sometimes giving the preference to one, sometimes to\nanother. This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited to the\nsame person.\n\n\n176.--There are two kinds of constancy in love, one arising from\nincessantly finding in the loved one fresh objects to love, the other\nfrom regarding it as a point of honour to be constant.\n\n\n177.--Perseverance is not deserving of blame or praise, as it is merely\nthe continuance of tastes and feelings which we can neither create or\ndestroy.\n\n\n178.--What makes us like new studies is not so much the weariness we\nhave of the old or the wish for change as the desire to be admired by\nthose who know more than ourselves, and the hope of advantage over those\nwho know less.\n\n\n179.--We sometimes complain of the levity of our friends to justify our\nown by anticipation.\n\n\n180.--Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as\nfear of the ill that may happen to us.\n\n\n181.--One sort of inconstancy springs from levity or weakness of mind,\nand makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes\nfrom a surfeit of matter.\n\n\n182.--Vices enter into the composition of virtues as poison into that of\nmedicines. Prudence collects and blends the two and renders them useful\nagainst the ills of life.\n\n\n183.--For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest\nmisfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.\n\n\n184.--We admit our faults to repair by our sincerity the evil we have\ndone in the opinion of others.\n\n[In the edition of 1665 this maxim stands as No. 200. We never admit our\nfaults except through vanity.]\n\n\n185.--There are both heroes of evil and heroes of good.\n\n[Ut alios industria ita hunc ignavia protulerat ad famam, habebaturque\nnon ganeo et profligator sed erudito luxu. --Tacit. Ann. xvi.]\n\n\n186.--We do not despise all who have vices, but we do despise all who\nhave not virtues.\n\n[\"If individuals have no virtues their vices may be of use to\nus.\"--Junius, 5th Oct. 1771.]\n\n\n187.--The name of virtue is as useful to our interest as that of vice.\n\n\n188.--The health of the mind is not less uncertain than that of the\nbody, and when passions seem furthest removed we are no less in danger\nof infection than of falling ill when we are well.\n\n\n189.--It seems that nature has at man's birth fixed the bounds of his\nvirtues and vices.\n\n\n190.--Great men should not have great faults.\n\n\n191.--We may say vices wait on us in the course of our life as the\nlandlords with whom we successively lodge, and if we travelled the road\ntwice over I doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.\n\n\n192.--When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have\nleft them.\n\n\n193.--There are relapses in the diseases of the mind as in those of\nthe body; what we call a cure is often no more than an intermission or\nchange of disease.\n\n\n194.--The defects of the mind are like the wounds of the body. Whatever\ncare we take to heal them the scars ever remain, and there is always\ndanger of their reopening.\n\n\n195.--The reason which often prevents us abandoning a single vice is\nhaving so many.\n\n\n196.--We easily forget those faults which are known only to ourselves.\n\n[Seneca says \"Innocentem quisque se dicit respiciens testem non\nconscientiam.\"]\n\n\n197.--There are men of whom we can never believe evil without having\nseen it. Yet there are very few in whom we should be surprised to see\nit.\n\n\n198.--We exaggerate the glory of some men to detract from that of\nothers, and we should praise Prince Conde and Marshal Turenne much less\nif we did not want to blame them both.\n\n[The allusion to Conde and Turenne gives the date at which these maxims\nwere published in 1665. Conde and Turenne were after their campaign with\nthe Imperialists at the height of their fame. It proves the truth of\nthe remark of Tacitus, \"Populus neminem sine aemulo sinit.\"-- Tac. Ann.\nxiv.]\n\n\n199.--The desire to appear clever often prevents our being so.\n\n\n200.--Virtue would not go far did not vanity escort her.\n\n\n201.--He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly\ndeceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content\nwith him deceives himself yet more.\n\n\n202.--Falsely honest men are those who disguise their faults both\nto themselves and others; truly honest men are those who know them\nperfectly and confess them.\n\n\n203.--He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.\n\n\n204.--The coldness of women is a balance and burden they add to their\nbeauty.\n\n\n205.--Virtue in woman is often the love of reputation and repose.\n\n\n206.--He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection\nof good men.\n\n\n207.--Folly follows us at all stages of life. If one appears wise 'tis\nbut because his folly is proportioned to his age and fortune.\n\n\n208.--There are foolish people who know and who skilfully use their\nfolly.\n\n\n209.--Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.\n\n\n210.--In growing old we become more foolish--and more wise.\n\n\n211.--There are people who are like farces, which are praised but for a\ntime (however foolish and distasteful they may be).\n\n[The last clause is added from Edition of 1665.]\n\n\n212.--Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.\n\n\n213.--Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make\nlife agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are\noften causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.\n\n[Junius said of the Marquis of Granby, \"He was as brave as a total\nabsence of all feeling and reflection could make him.\"--21st Jan. 1769.]\n\n\n214.--Valour in common soldiers is a perilous method of earning their\nliving.\n\n[\"Men venture necks to gain a fortune, The soldier does it ev{'}ry day,\n(Eight to the week) for sixpence pay.\" {--Samuel Butler,} Hudibras, Part\nII., canto i., line 512.]\n\n\n215.--Perfect bravery and sheer cowardice are two extremes rarely found.\nThe space between them is vast, and embraces all other sorts of courage.\nThe difference between them is not less than between faces and tempers.\nMen will freely expose themselves at the beginning of an action, and\nrelax and be easily discouraged if it should last. Some are content to\nsatisfy worldly honour, and beyond that will do little else. Some are\nnot always equally masters of their timidity. Others allow themselves\nto be overcome by panic; others charge because they dare not remain at\ntheir posts. Some may be found whose courage is strengthened by small\nperils, which prepare them to face greater dangers. Some will dare a\nsword cut and flinch from a bullet; others dread bullets little and fear\nto fight with swords. These varied kinds of courage agree in this, that\nnight, by increasing fear and concealing gallant or cowardly actions,\nallows men to spare themselves. There is even a more general discretion\nto be observed, for we meet with no man who does all he would have done\nif he were assured of getting off scot-free; so that it is certain that\nthe fear of death does somewhat subtract from valour.\n\n[See also \"Table Talk of Napoleon,\" who agrees with this, so far as to\nsay that few, but himself, had a two o'clock of the morning valour.]\n\n\n216.--Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before\nall the world.\n\n[\"It is said of untrue valours that some men's valours are in the eyes\nof them that look on.\"--Bacon, Advancement Of Learning{, (1605), Book I,\nSection II, paragraph 5}.]\n\n\n217.--Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul which raises it\nabove the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the sight of great\nperils can arouse in it: by this strength heroes maintain a calm\naspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and\nterrible accidents.\n\n\n218.--Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.\n\n[So Massillon, in one of his sermons, \"Vice pays homage to virtue in\ndoing honour to her appearance.\"\n\nSo Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, says, \"You have done as much\nmischief to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that\nan appearance of morals and religion are useful in society.\"--28 Sept.\n1771.]\n\n\n219.--Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor,\nfew wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make\nthe design for which they expose themselves succeed.\n\n\n220.--Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and\nwomen chaste.\n\n[\"Vanity bids all her sons be brave and all her daughters chaste and\ncourteous. But why do we need her instruction?\"--Sterne, Sermons.]\n\n\n221.--We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this\nmakes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than\nrogues show in preserving their fortunes.\n\n\n222.--Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their\nbody, or their mind, is beginning to fail.\n\n\n223.--Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce\ntogether; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because\nwe shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.\n\n\n224.--All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter\nthemselves that they are grateful.\n\n\n225.--What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the\npride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the\nbenefit.\n\n[\"The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring\nbenefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be\nreturned.\"--Junius's Letter To The King.]\n\n\n226.--Too great a hurry to discharge of an obligation is a kind of\ningratitude.\n\n\n227.--Lucky people are bad hands at correcting their faults; they always\nbelieve that they are right when fortune backs up their vice or folly.\n\n[\"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy\nimpute all their success to prudence and merit.\"--Swift, Thoughts On\nVarious Subjects]\n\n\n228.--Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.\n\n\n229.--The good we have received from a man should make us excuse the\nwrong he does us.\n\n\n230.--Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or\nevil without producing the like. We imitate good actions by emulation,\nand bad ones by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons until\nexample liberates.\n\n\n231.--It is great folly to wish only to be wise.\n\n\n232.--Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest\nor vanity that causes them.\n\n\n233.--In afflictions there are various kinds of hypocrisy. In one, under\nthe pretext of weeping for one dear to us we bemoan ourselves; we\nregret her good opinion of us, we deplore the loss of our comfort, our\npleasure, our consideration. Thus the dead have the credit of tears\nshed for the living. I affirm 'tis a kind of hypocrisy which in these\nafflictions deceives itself. There is another kind not so innocent\nbecause it imposes on all the world, that is the grief of those who\naspire to the glory of a noble and immortal sorrow. After Time,\nwhich absorbs all, has obliterated what sorrow they had, they still\nobstinately obtrude their tears, their sighs their groans, they wear a\nsolemn face, and try to persuade others by all their acts, that their\ngrief will end only with their life. This sad and distressing vanity is\ncommonly found in ambitious women. As their sex closes to them all paths\nto glory, they strive to render themselves celebrated by showing an\ninconsolable affliction. There is yet another kind of tears arising from\nbut small sources, which flow easily and cease as easily. One weeps to\nachieve a reputation for tenderness, weeps to be pitied, weeps to be\nbewept, in fact one weeps to avoid the disgrace of not weeping!\n\n[\"In grief the {Pleasure} is still uppermost{;} and the affliction we\nsuffer has no resemblance to absolute pain which is always odious, and\nwhich we endeavour to shake off as soon as possible.\"--Burke, Sublime\nAnd Beautiful{, (1756), Part I, Sect. V}.]\n\n\n234.--It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so\nobstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken,\nand we do not want to be the last.\n\n\n235.--We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they\nenable us to prove our tenderness for them.\n\n\n236.--It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness\nand forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the\nshortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of\ngiving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.\n\n\n237.--No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength\nenough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or\npowerlessness of will.\n\n\n238.--It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most men, as to do them too\nmuch good.\n\n\n239.--Nothing flatters our pride so much as the confidence of the great,\nbecause we regard it as the result of our worth, without remembering\nthat generally 'tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret.\n\n\n240.--We may say of conformity as distinguished from beauty, that it is\na symmetry which knows no rules, and a secret harmony of features both\none with each other and with the colour and appearance of the person.\n\n\n241.--Flirtation is at the bottom of woman's nature, although all do not\npractise it, some being restrained by fear, others by sense.\n\n[\"By nature woman is a flirt, but her flirting changes both in the mode\nand object according to her opinions.\"-- Rousseau, Emile.]\n\n\n242.--We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.\n\n\n243.--Few things are impossible in themselves; application to make them\nsucceed fails us more often than the means.\n\n\n244.--Sovereign ability consists in knowing the value of things.\n\n\n245.--There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability.\n\n[\"You have accomplished a great stroke in diplomacy when you have made\nothers think that you have only very average abilities.\"--La Bruyere.]\n\n\n246.--What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises\nsmall to run after greater interest.\n\n\n247.--The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love\nto win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us\ndepositaries of the most important matters.\n\n\n248.--Magnanimity despises all, to win all.\n\n\n249.--There is no less eloquence in the voice, in the eyes and in the\nair of a speaker than in his choice of words.\n\n\n250.--True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that\ncould be said.\n\n\n251.--There are people whose faults become them, others whose very\nvirtues disgrace them.\n\n[\"There are faults which do him honour, and virtues that disgrace\nhim.\"--Junius, Letter Of 28th May, 1770.]\n\n\n252.--It is as common to change one's tastes, as it is uncommon to\nchange one's inclinations.\n\n\n253.--Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and vices.\n\n\n254.--Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant\nothers. It is one of the devices of Pride to lower us to raise us; and\ntruly pride transforms itself in a thousand ways, and is never so well\ndisguised and more able to deceive than when it hides itself under the\nform of humility.\n\n[\"Grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for business.\"--Junius,\nLetter To The Duke Of Grafton.\n\n\"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility,\nAnd the devil was pleased, for his darling sin Is the pride that apes\nhumility.\" Southey, Devil's Walk.]\n\n{There are numerous corrections necessary for this quotation; I will\nkeep the original above so you can compare the correct passages:\n\n\"He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility,\nAnd he owned with a grin, That his favourite sin Is pride that apes\nhumility.\" --Southey, Devil's Walk, Stanza 8.\n\n\"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes\nhumility.\" --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts}\n\n\n255.--All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice, gestures and\nlooks, and this harmony, as it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant,\nmakes people agreeable or disagreeable.\n\n\n256.--In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what\nwe wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.\n\n[\"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely\nplayers.\"--Shakespeare, As You Like It{, Act II, Scene VII, Jaques}.\n\n\"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should\npreserve his consistency to the last.\"--Junius.]\n\n\n257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal\nthe want of mind.\n\n[\"Gravity is the very essence of imposture.\"--Shaftesbury,\nCharacteristics, p. 11, vol. I. \"The very essence of gravity is design,\nand consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world\nfor more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its\npretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit\nhad long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the\ndefects of the mind.\"--Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol. I., chap. ii.]\n\n\n258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than wit.\n\n\n259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion\nwe feel than in that we inspire.\n\n\n260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed\npolite.\n\n\n261.--The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a\nsecond self-love.\n\n\n262.--There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in\nlove, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved\none than his own.\n\n\n263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which\nwe like more than that we give away.\n\n\n264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others.\nIt is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We\nhelp others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these\nservices which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves\nby anticipation.\n\n[\"Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the\nimagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is\ncalled compassion.\"--Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]\n\n\n265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what\nwe cannot see.\n\n[\"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong.\" Dryden, Absalom And\nAchitophel{, line 547}.]\n\n\n266.--We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent\npassions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness,\nlanguishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she\nusurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly\nconsuming and destroying both passions and virtues.\n\n\n267.--A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined\nit, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and\nwe do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.\n\n\n268.--We credit judges with the meanest motives, and yet we desire our\nreputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all,\neither from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of intelligence,\nopposed to us--and yet 'tis only to make these men decide in our favour\nthat we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life.\n\n\n269.--No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.\n\n\n270.--One honour won is a surety for more.\n\n\n271.--Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.\n\n[\"The best of life is but intoxication.\"--{Lord Byron, } Don Juan{,\nCanto II, stanza 179}. In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes\nwith--\"it is the fever of health, the folly of reason.\"]\n\n\n272.--Nothing should so humiliate men who have deserved great praise, as\nthe care they have taken to acquire it by the smallest means.\n\n\n273.--There are persons of whom the world approves who have no merit\nbeyond the vices they use in the affairs of life.\n\n\n274.--The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower to the fruit; it\nlends a lustre which is easily lost, but which never returns.\n\n\n275.--Natural goodness, which boasts of being so apparent, is often\nsmothered by the least interest.\n\n\n276.--Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as\nthe wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.\n\n\n277.--Women often think they love when they do not love. The business of\na love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural\nbias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing,\npersuades them that they have real passion when they have but\nflirtation.\n\n[\"And if in fact she takes a {\"}Grande Passion{\"}, It is a very serious\nthing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry,\nor a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash\non. Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the {Tenth} instance will\nbe a tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do.\" {--Lord\nByron, }Don Juan, canto xii. stanza 77.]\n\n\n278.--What makes us so often discontented with those who transact\nbusiness for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their\nfriends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the\nhonour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.\n\n\n279.--When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is\noften less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.\n\n\n280.--The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the\nenvy we bear to those who are established.\n\n\n281.--Pride, which inspires, often serves to moderate envy.\n\n\n282.--Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that we should judge badly\nwere we not deceived.\n\n\n283.--Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing how to use than in\ngiving good advice.\n\n\n284.--There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they\nwere wholly without goodness.\n\n\n285.--Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one\ncan say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving\npraise.\n\n\n286.--It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really\nceased to love.\n\n\n287.--Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so many resources on\nthe same matter, as the lack of intelligence makes us hesitate at each\nthing our imagination presents, and hinders us from at first discerning\nwhich is the best.\n\n\n288.--There are matters and maladies which at certain times remedies\nonly serve to make worse; true skill consists in knowing when it is\ndangerous to use them.\n\n\n289.--Affected simplicity is refined imposture.\n\n[Domitianus simplicitatis ac modestiae imagine studium litterarum et\namorem carminum simulabat quo velaret animum et fratris aemulationi\nsubduceretur.--Tacitus, Ann. iv.]\n\n\n290.--There are as many errors of temper as of mind.\n\n\n291.--Man's merit, like the crops, has its season.\n\n\n292.--One may say of temper as of many buildings; it has divers aspects,\nsome agreeable, others disagreeable.\n\n\n293.--Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming\nAmbition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and\nsloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.\n\n\n294.--We always like those who admire us, we do not always like those\nwhom we admire.\n\n\n295.--It is well that we know not all our wishes.\n\n\n296.--It is difficult to love those we do not esteem, but it is no less\nso to love those whom we esteem much more than ourselves.\n\n\n297.--Bodily temperaments have a common course and rule which\nimperceptibly affect our will. They advance in combination, and\nsuccessively exercise a secret empire over us, so that, without our\nperceiving it, they become a great part of all our actions.\n\n\n298.--The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving\ngreater benefits.\n\n[Hence the common proverb \"Gratitude is merely a lively sense of favors\nto come.\"]\n\n\n299.--Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many\npeople show gratitude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not\nshow ingratitude for great favours.\n\n\n300.--There are follies as catching as infections.\n\n\n301.--Many people despise, but few know how to bestow wealth.\n\n\n302.--Only in things of small value we usually are bold enough not to\ntrust to appearances.\n\n\n303.--Whatever good quality may be imputed to us, we ourselves find\nnothing new in it.\n\n\n304.--We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot forgive those whom we\nbore.\n\n\n305.--Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds often should be\npraised for our good deeds.\n\n\n306.--We find very few ungrateful people when we are able to confer\nfavours.\n\n\n307.--It is as proper to be boastful alone as it is ridiculous to be so\nin company.\n\n\n308.--Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great;\nto console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small\nability.\n\n\n309.--There are persons fated to be fools, who commit follies not only\nby choice, but who are forced by fortune to do so.\n\n\n310.--Sometimes there are accidents in our life the skilful extrication\nfrom which demands a little folly.\n\n\n311.--If there be men whose folly has never appeared, it is because it\nhas never been closely looked for.\n\n\n312.--Lovers are never tired of each other,--they always speak of\nthemselves.\n\n\n313.--How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least\ntriviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how\noften we have told it to the same person?\n\n[\"Old men who yet retain the memory of things past, and forget how often\nthey have told them, are most tedious companions.\"--Montaigne, {Essays,\nBook I, Chapter IX}.]\n\n\n314.--The extreme delight we take in talking of ourselves should warn us\nthat it is not shared by those who listen.\n\n\n315.--What commonly hinders us from showing the recesses of our heart\nto our friends, is not the distrust we have of them, but that we have of\nourselves.\n\n\n316.--Weak persons cannot be sincere.\n\n\n317.--'Tis a small misfortune to oblige an ungrateful man; but it is\nunbearable to be obliged by a scoundrel.\n\n\n318.--We may find means to cure a fool of his folly, but there are none\nto set straight a cross-grained spirit.\n\n\n319.--If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults we cannot\nlong preserve the feelings we should hold towards our friends and\nbenefactors.\n\n\n320.--To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is but to\nreproach them with impunity.\n\n[\"Praise undeserved is satire in disguise,\" quoted by Pope from a poem\nwhich has not survived, \"The Garland,\" by Mr. Broadhurst. \"In some cases\nexaggerated or inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire.\"--\nScott, Woodstock.]\n\n\n321.--We are nearer loving those who hate us, than those who love us\nmore than we desire.\n\n\n322.--Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.\n\n\n323.--Our wisdom is no less at the mercy of Fortune than our goods.\n\n\n324.--There is more self-love than love in jealousy.\n\n\n325.--We often comfort ourselves by the weakness of evils, for which\nreason has not the strength to console us.\n\n\n326.--Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour itself.\n\n[\"No,\" says a commentator, \"Ridicule may do harm, but it cannot\ndishonour; it is vice which confers dishonour.\"]\n\n\n327.--We own to small faults to persuade others that we have not great\nones.\n\n\n328.--Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.\n\n\n329.--We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery --we only dislike the\nmethod.\n\n[\"{But} when I tell him he hates flatter{ers}, He says he does, being\nthen most flattered.\" Shakespeare, Julius Caesar {,Act II, Scene I,\nDecius}.]\n\n\n330.--We pardon in the degree that we love.\n\n\n331.--It is more difficult to be faithful to a mistress when one is\nhappy, than when we are ill-treated by her.\n\n[Si qua volet regnare diu contemnat amantem.--Ovid, Amores, ii. 19.]\n\n\n332.--Women do not know all their powers of flirtation.\n\n\n333.--Women cannot be completely severe unless they hate.\n\n\n334.--Women can less easily resign flirtations than love.\n\n\n335.--In love deceit almost always goes further than mistrust.\n\n\n336.--There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.\n\n\n337.--There are certain good qualities as there are senses, and those\nwho want them can neither perceive nor understand them.\n\n\n338.--When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we\nhate.\n\n\n339.--We only appreciate our good or evil in proportion to our\nself-love.\n\n\n340.--The wit of most women rather strengthens their folly than their\nreason.\n\n[\"Women have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit, but for solid\nreasoning and good sense I never knew one in my life that had it,\nand who reasoned and acted consequentially for four and twenty hours\ntogether.\"--Lord Chesterfield, Letter 129.]\n\n\n341.--The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness\nof age.\n\n\n342.--The accent of our native country dwells in the heart and mind as\nwell as on the tongue.\n\n\n343.--To be a great man one should know how to profit by every phase of\nfortune.\n\n\n344.--Most men, like plants, possess hidden qualities which chance\ndiscovers.\n\n\n345.--Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves.\n\n\n346.--If a woman's temper is beyond control there can be no control of\nthe mind or heart.\n\n\n347.--We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree\nwith us.\n\n[\"That was excellently observed, say I, when I read an author when his\nopinion agrees with mine.\"--Swift, Thoughts On Various Subjects.]\n\n\n348.--When one loves one doubts even what one most believes.\n\n\n349.--The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate flirtation.\n\n\n350.--Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is\nbecause they think themselves more clever than we are.\n\n[\"I could pardon all his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I cannot forgive\nhis supposing me capable of the gross folly of being duped by his\nprofessions.\"--Sir Walter Scott, Quentin Durward.]\n\n\n351.--We have much trouble to break with one, when we no longer are in\nlove.\n\n\n352.--We almost always are bored with persons with whom we should not be\nbored.\n\n\n353.--A gentleman may love like a lunatic, but not like a beast.\n\n\n354.--There are certain defects which well mounted glitter like virtue\nitself.\n\n\n355.--Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater\nthan our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our\nregret.\n\n\n356.--Usually we only praise heartily those who admire us.\n\n\n357.--Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds\nsee all and are not even hurt.\n\n\n358.--Humility is the true proof of Christian virtues; without it we\nretain all our faults, and they are only covered by pride to hide them\nfrom others, and often from ourselves.\n\n\n359.--Infidelities should extinguish love, and we ought not to be\njealous when we have cause to be so. No persons escape causing jealousy\nwho are worthy of exciting it.\n\n\n360.--We are more humiliated by the least infidelity towards us, than by\nour greatest towards others.\n\n\n361.--Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with\nit.\n\n\n362.--Most women do not grieve so much for the death of their lovers for\nlove's-sake, as to show they were worthy of being beloved.\n\n\n363.--The evils we do to others give us less pain than those we do to\nourselves.\n\n\n364.--We well know that it is bad taste to talk of our wives; but we do\nnot so well know that it is the same to speak of ourselves.\n\n\n365.--There are virtues which degenerate into vices when they arise from\nNature, and others which when acquired are never perfect. For example,\nreason must teach us to manage our estate and our confidence, while\nNature should have given us goodness and valour.\n\n\n366.--However we distrust the sincerity of those whom we talk with, we\nalways believe them more sincere with us than with others.\n\n\n367.--There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.\n\n[\"Every woman is at heart a rake.\"--Pope. Moral Essays, ii.]\n\n\n368.--The greater number of good women are like concealed treasures,\nsafe as no one has searched for them.\n\n\n369.--The violences we put upon ourselves to escape love are often more\ncruel than the cruelty of those we love.\n\n\n370.--There are not many cowards who know the whole of their fear.\n\n\n371.--It is generally the fault of the loved one not to perceive when\nlove ceases.\n\n\n372.--Most young people think they are natural when they are only\nboorish and rude.\n\n\n373.--Some tears after having deceived others deceive ourselves.\n\n\n374.--If we think we love a woman for love of herself we are greatly\ndeceived.\n\n\n375.--Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.\n\n\n376.--Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.\n\n\n377.--The greatest mistake of penetration is not to have fallen short,\nbut to have gone too far.\n\n\n378.--We may bestow advice, but we cannot inspire the conduct.\n\n\n379.--As our merit declines so also does our taste.\n\n\n380.--Fortune makes visible our virtues or our vices, as light does\nobjects.\n\n\n381.--The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is\nlittle better than infidelity.\n\n\n382.--Our actions are like the rhymed ends of blank verses (Bouts-Rimes)\nwhere to each one puts what construction he pleases.\n\n[The Bouts-Rimes was a literary game popular in the 17th and 18th\ncenturies--the rhymed words at the end of a line being given for others\nto fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being given, \"brook, why, crook, I,\"\nreturned the burlesque verse-- \"I sits with my toes in a Brook, And\nif any one axes me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy\nmakes me, ses I.\"]\n\n\n383.--The desire of talking about ourselves, and of putting our\nfaults in the light we wish them to be seen, forms a great part of our\nsincerity.\n\n\n384.--We should only be astonished at still being able to be astonished.\n\n\n385.--It is equally as difficult to be contented when one has too much\nor too little love.\n\n\n386.--No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow\nthemselves to be wrong.\n\n\n387.--A fool has not stuff in him to be good.\n\n\n388.--If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them\ntotter.\n\n\n389.--What makes the vanity of others unsupportable is that it wounds\nour own.\n\n\n390.--We give up more easily our interest than our taste.\n\n\n391.--Fortune appears so blind to none as to those to whom she has done\nno good.\n\n\n392.--We should manage fortune like our health, enjoy it when it is\ngood, be patient when it is bad, and never resort to strong remedies but\nin an extremity.\n\n\n393.--Awkwardness sometimes disappears in the camp, never in the court.\n\n\n394.--A man is often more clever than one other, but not than all\nothers.\n\n[\"Singuli decipere ac decipi possunt, nemo omnes, omnes neminem\nfefellerunt.\"--Pliny{ the Younger, Panegyricus, LXII}.]\n\n\n395.--We are often less unhappy at being deceived by one we loved, than\non being deceived.\n\n\n396.--We keep our first lover for a long time--if we do not get a\nsecond.\n\n\n397.--We have not the courage to say generally that we have no faults,\nand that our enemies have no good qualities; but in fact we are not far\nfrom believing so.\n\n\n398.--Of all our faults that which we most readily admit is idleness: we\nbelieve that it makes all virtues ineffectual, and that without utterly\ndestroying, it at least suspends their operation.\n\n\n399.--There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune:\nit is a certain manner what distinguishes us, and which seems to destine\nus for great things; it is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves;\nit is by this quality that we gain the deference of other men, and it is\nthis which commonly raises us more above them, than birth, rank, or even\nmerit itself.\n\n\n400.--There may be talent without position, but there is no position\nwithout some kind of talent.\n\n\n401.--Rank is to merit what dress is to a pretty woman.\n\n\n402.--What we find the least of in flirtation is love.\n\n\n403.--Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us, and there are\ntiresome people whose deserts would be ill rewarded if we did not desire\nto purchase their absence.\n\n\n404.--It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents\nand abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power\nof bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and\nmore perfect than art could possibly do.\n\n\n405.--We reach quite inexperienced the different stages of life, and\noften, in spite of the number of our years, we lack experience.\n\n[\"To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which\nillumine only the track it has passed.\"-- Coleridge.]\n\n\n406.--Flirts make it a point of honour to be jealous of their lovers, to\nconceal their envy of other women.\n\n\n407.--It may well be that those who have trapped us by their tricks do\nnot seem to us so foolish as we seem to ourselves when trapped by the\ntricks of others.\n\n\n408.--The most dangerous folly of old persons who have been loveable is\nto forget that they are no longer so.\n\n[\"Every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome. The\nsuspicion of age no woman, let her be ever so old, forgives.\"--Lord\nChesterfield, Letter 129.]\n\n\n409.--We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world\nonly saw the motives which caused them.\n\n\n410.--The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our faults to a\nfriend, but to show him his own.\n\n\n4ll.--We have few faults which are not far more excusable than the means\nwe adopt to hide them.\n\n\n412.--Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our\npower to re-establish our character.\n\n[\"This is hardly a period at which the most irregular character may not\nbe redeemed. The mistakes of one sin find a retreat in patriotism, those\nof the other in devotion.\" --Junius, Letter To The King.]\n\n\n413.--A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.\n\n[According to Segrais this maxim was a hit at Racine and Boileau, who,\ndespising ordinary conversation, talked incessantly of literature; but\nthere is some doubt as to Segrais' statement.--Aime Martin.]\n\n\n414.--Idiots and lunatics see only their own wit.\n\n415.--Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.\n\n\n416.--The vivacity which increases in old age is not far removed from\nfolly.\n\n\n[\"How ill {white} hairs become {a} fool and jester.\"-- Shakespeare,\nKing Henry IV, Part II, Act. V, Scene V, King}.\n\n\"Can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can\ngrey hairs make folly venerable, and is there no period to be reserved\nfor meditation or retirement.\"-- Junius, To The Duke Of Bedford, 19th\nSept. 1769.]\n\n\n417.--In love the quickest is always the best cure.\n\n\n418.--Young women who do not want to appear flirts, and old men who\ndo not want to appear ridiculous, should not talk of love as a matter\nwherein they can have any interest.\n\n\n419.--We may seem great in a post beneath our capacity, but we oftener\nseem little in a post above it.\n\n\n420.--We often believe we have constancy in misfortune when we have\nnothing but debasement, and we suffer misfortunes without regarding\nthem as cowards who let themselves be killed from fear of defending\nthemselves.\n\n\n421.--Conceit causes more conversation than wit.\n\n\n422.--All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us\nridiculous.\n\n[\"In love we all are fools alike.\"--Gay{, The Beggar's Opera, (1728),\nAct III, Scene I, Lucy}.]\n\n\n423.--Few know how to be old.\n\n\n424.--We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have,\nthus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.\n\n\n425.--Penetration has a spice of divination in it which tickles our\nvanity more than any other quality of the mind.\n\n\n426.--The charm of novelty and old custom, however opposite to each\nother, equally blind us to the faults of our friends.\n\n[\"Two things the most opposite blind us equally, custom and novelty.\"-La\nBruyere, Des Judgements.]\n\n\n427.--Most friends sicken us of friendship, most devotees of devotion.\n\n\n428.--We easily forgive in our friends those faults we do not perceive.\n\n\n429.--Women who love, pardon more readily great indiscretions than\nlittle infidelities.\n\n\n430.--In the old age of love as in life we still survive for the evils,\nthough no longer for the pleasures.\n\n[\"The youth of friendship is better than its old age.\" --Hazlitt's\nCharacteristics, 229.]\n\n\n431.--Nothing prevents our being unaffected so much as our desire to\nseem so.\n\n\n432.--To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in\nthem.\n\n\n433.--The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be\nborn without envy.\n\n[\"Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae.\" --Cicero In\nMarc Ant.]\n\n\n434.--When our friends have deceived us we owe them but indifference to\nthe tokens of their friendship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe\nthem pity.\n\n\n435.--Luck and temper rule the world.\n\n\n436.--It is far easier to know men than to know man.\n\n\n437.--We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but\nby the use he makes of them.\n\n\n438.--There is a certain lively gratitude which not only releases\nus from benefits received, but which also, by making a return to our\nfriends as payment, renders them indebted to us.\n\n[\"And understood not that a grateful mind, By owing owes not, but is at\nonce Indebted and discharged.\" Milton. Paradise Lost.]\n\n\n439.--We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what\nwe desired.\n\n\n440.--The cause why the majority of women are so little given to\nfriendship is, that it is insipid after having felt love.\n\n[\"Those who have experienced a great passion neglect friendship, and\nthose who have united themselves to friendship have nought to do with\nlove.\"--La Bruyere. Du Coeur.]\n\n\n441.--As in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance\nthan from knowledge.\n\n\n442.--We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.\n\n\n443.--The most violent passions give some respite, but vanity always\ndisturbs us.\n\n\n444.--Old fools are more foolish than young fools.\n\n[\"Malvolio. Infirmity{,} that decays the wise{,} doth eve{r} make the\nbetter fool. Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the\nbetter increasing of your folly.\"--Shakespeare. Twelfth Night{, Act I,\nScene V}.]\n\n\n445.--Weakness is more hostile to virtue than vice.\n\n\n446.--What makes the grief of shame and jealousy so acute is that vanity\ncannot aid us in enduring them.\n\n\n447.--Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed.\n\n[Honour has its supreme laws, to which education is bound to\nconform....Those things which honour forbids are more rigorously\nforbidden when the laws do not concur in the prohibition, and those\nit commands are more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be\ncommanded by law.--Montesquieu, {The Spirit Of Laws, }b. 4, c. ii.]\n\n\n448.--A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in\nguiding an ill-trained mind.\n\n\n449.--When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without\nhaving gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our\nhopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear\nworthy to fill it.\n\n\n450.--Our pride is often increased by what we retrench from our other\nfaults.\n\n[\"The loss of sensual pleasures was supplied and compensated by\nspiritual pride.\"--Gibbon. Decline And Fall, chap. xv.]\n\n\n451.--No fools so wearisome as those who have some wit.\n\n\n452.--No one believes that in every respect he is behind the man he\nconsiders the ablest in the world.\n\n\n453.--In great matters we should not try so much to create opportunities\nas to utilise those that offer themselves.\n\n[Yet Lord Bacon says \"A wise man will make more opportunities than he\nfinds.\"--Essays, {(1625), \"Of Ceremonies and Respects\"}]\n\n\n454.--There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by\ngiving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.\n\n\n455.--However disposed the world may be to judge wrongly, it far oftener\nfavours false merit than does justice to true.\n\n\n456.--Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.\n\n\n457.--We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by\ntrying to seem what we are not.\n\n\n458.--Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us\nthan we do in our opinion of ourselves.\n\n\n459.--There are many remedies to cure love, yet none are infallible.\n\n\n460.--It would be well for us if we knew all our passions make us do.\n\n\n461.--Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of life all the\npleasures of youth.\n\n\n462.--The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe\nourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.\n\n\n463.--There is often more pride than goodness in our grief for our\nenemies' miseries; it is to show how superior we are to them, that we\nbestow on them the sign of our compassion.\n\n\n464.--There exists an excess of good and evil which surpasses our\ncomprehension.\n\n\n465.--Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the same protection as\ncrime.\n\n\n466.--Of all the violent passions the one that becomes a woman best is\nlove.\n\n\n467.--Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.\n\n\n468.--Some bad qualities form great talents.\n\n\n469.--We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason.\n\n\n470.--All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful, both the good as\nwell as the bad, and nearly all are creatures of opportunities.\n\n\n471.--In their first passion women love their lovers, in all the others\nthey love love.\n\n[\"In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all her others what\nshe loves is love.\" {--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, Canto iii., stanza 3. \"We\ntruly love once, the first time; the subsequent passions are more or\nless involuntary.\" La Bruyere: Du Coeur.]\n\n\n472.--Pride as the other passions has its follies. We are ashamed to own\nwe are jealous, and yet we plume ourselves in having been and being able\nto be so.\n\n\n473.--However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.\n\n[\"It is more common to see perfect love than real friendship.\"--La\nBruyere. Du Coeur.]\n\n\n474.--There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.\n\n\n475.--The desire to be pitied or to be admired often forms the greater\npart of our confidence.\n\n\n476.--Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.\n\n\n477.--The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to\nmake our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always\nexcited by passions are seldom really possessed of any.\n\n\n478.--Fancy does not enable us to invent so many different\ncontradictions as there are by nature in every heart.\n\n\n479.--It is only people who possess firmness who can possess true\ngentleness. In those who appear gentle it is generally only weakness,\nwhich is readily converted into harshness.\n\n\n480.--Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to blame in those we desire\nto cure of it.\n\n\n481.--Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have\nit are generally only pliant or weak.\n\n\n482.--The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy\nor pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no\none has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the\nfull extent of its capacities.\n\n\n483.--Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.\n\n\n484.--When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is\nproner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.\n\n\n485.--Those who have had great passions often find all their lives made\nmiserable in being cured of them.\n\n\n486.--More persons exist without self-love than without envy.\n\n[\"I do not believe that there is a human creature in his senses arrived\nat maturity, that at some time or other has not been carried away by\nthis passion (envy) in good earnest, and yet I never met with any who\ndared own he was guilty of it, but in jest.\"--Mandeville: Fable Of The\nBees; Remark N.]\n\n\n487.--We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.\n\n\n488.--The calm or disturbance of our mind does not depend so much on\nwhat we regard as the more important things of life, as in a judicious\nor injudicious arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.\n\n\n489.--However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the\nenemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either\npretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.\n\n\n490.--We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from\nambition to love.\n\n[\"Men commence by love, finish by ambition, and do not find a quieter\nseat while they remain there.\"--La Bruyere: Du Coeur.]\n\n\n491.--Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no passion\nwhich is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present\nhas so much power to the prejudice of the future.\n\n\n492.--Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite\nnumber of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant\nexpectations, others mistake great future advantages for small present\ninterests.\n\n[Aime Martin says, \"The author here confuses greediness, the desire\nand avarice--passions which probably have a common origin, but produce\ndifferent results. The greedy man is nearly always desirous to possess,\nand often foregoes great future advantages for small present interests.\nThe avaricious man, on the other hand, mistakes present advantages for\nthe great expectations of the future. Both desire to possess and\nenjoy. But the miser possesses and enjoys nothing but the pleasure of\npossessing; he risks nothing, gives nothing, hopes nothing, his life is\ncentred in his strong box, beyond that he has no want.\"]\n\n\n493.--It appears that men do not find they have enough faults, as they\nincrease the number by certain peculiar qualities that they affect to\nassume, and which they cultivate with so great assiduity that at length\nthey become natural faults, which they can no longer correct.\n\n\n494.--What makes us see that men know their faults better than we\nimagine, is that they are never wrong when they speak of their conduct;\nthe same self-love that usually blinds them enlightens them, and gives\nthem such true views as to make them suppress or disguise the smallest\nthing that might be censured.\n\n\n495.--Young men entering life should be either shy or bold; a solemn and\nsedate manner usually degenerates into impertinence.\n\n\n496.--Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.\n\n\n497.--It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be\npretty unless young.\n\n\n498.--Some persons are so frivolous and fickle that they are as far\nremoved from real defects as from substantial qualities.\n\n\n499.--We do not usually reckon a woman's first flirtation until she has\nhad a second.\n\n\n500.--Some people are so self-occupied that when in love they find a\nmode by which to be engrossed with the passion without being so with the\nperson they love.\n\n\n501.--Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more by its ways than by\nitself.\n\n\n502.--A little wit with good sense bores less in the long run than much\nwit with ill nature.\n\n\n503.--Jealousy is the worst of all evils, yet the one that is least\npitied by those who cause it.\n\n\n504.--Thus having treated of the hollowness of so many apparent virtues,\nit is but just to say something on the hollowness of the contempt for\ndeath. I allude to that contempt of death which the heathen boasted they\nderived from their unaided understanding, without the hope of a future\nstate. There is a difference between meeting death with courage and\ndespising it. The first is common enough, the last I think always\nfeigned. Yet everything that could be has been written to persuade us\nthat death is no evil, and the weakest of men, equally with the bravest,\nhave given many noble examples on which to found such an opinion, still\nI do not think that any man of good sense has ever yet believed in it.\nAnd the pains we take to persuade others as well as ourselves amply show\nthat the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may be disgusted\nwith life, but for none may we despise it. Not even those who commit\nsuicide regard it as a light matter, and are as much alarmed and\nstartled as the rest of the world if death meets them in a different\nway than the one they have selected. The difference we observe in the\ncourage of so great a number of brave men, is from meeting death in a\nway different from what they imagined, when it shows itself nearer\nat one time than at another. Thus it ultimately happens that having\ndespised death when they were ignorant of it, they dread it when they\nbecome acquainted with it. If we could avoid seeing it with all its\nsurroundings, we might perhaps believe that it was not the greatest of\nevils. The wisest and bravest are those who take the best means to avoid\nreflecting on it, as every man who sees it in its real light regards\nit as dreadful. The necessity of dying created all the constancy of\nphilosophers. They thought it but right to go with a good grace when\nthey could not avoid going, and being unable to prolong their lives\nindefinitely, nothing remained but to build an immortal reputation, and\nto save from the general wreck all that could be saved. To put a good\nface upon it, let it suffice, not to say all that we think to ourselves,\nbut rely more on our nature than on our fallible reason, which might\nmake us think we could approach death with indifference. The glory of\ndying with courage, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave\nbehind us a good reputation, the assurance of being enfranchised from\nthe miseries of life and being no longer dependent on the wiles of\nfortune, are resources which should not be passed over. But we must not\nregard them as infallible. They should affect us in the same proportion\nas a single shelter affects those who in war storm a fortress. At a\ndistance they think it may afford cover, but when near they find it\nonly a feeble protection. It is only deceiving ourselves to imagine\nthat death, when near, will seem the same as at a distance, or that our\nfeelings, which are merely weaknesses, are naturally so strong that they\nwill not suffer in an attack of the rudest of trials. It is equally as\nabsurd to try the effect of self-esteem and to think it will enable us\nto count as naught what will of necessity destroy it. And the mind in\nwhich we trust to find so many resources will be far too weak in the\nstruggle to persuade us in the way we wish. For it is this which betrays\nus so frequently, and which, instead of filling us with contempt of\ndeath, serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful. The most\nit can do for us is to persuade us to avert our gaze and fix it on other\nobjects. Cato and Brutus each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime\nago contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when he was about to be\nbroken on the wheel. So however diverse the motives they but realize the\nsame result. For the rest it is a fact that whatever difference there\nmay be between the peer and the peasant, we have constantly seen both\nthe one and the other meet death with the same composure. Still there\nis always this difference, that the contempt the peer shows for death is\nbut the love of fame which hides death from his sight; in the peasant it\nis but the result of his limited vision that hides from him the extent\nof the evil, end leaves him free to reflect on other things.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FIRST SUPPLEMENT\n\n[The following reflections are extracted from the first two editions\nof La Rochefoucauld, having been suppressed by the author in succeeding\nissues.]\n\nI.--Self-love is the love of self, and of all things for self. It\nmakes men self-worshippers, and if fortune permits them, causes them to\ntyrannize over others; it is never quiet when out of itself, and only\nrests upon other subjects as a bee upon flowers, to extract from them\nits proper food. Nothing is so headstrong as its desires, nothing so\nwell concealed as its designs, nothing so skilful as its management;\nits suppleness is beyond description; its changes surpass those of the\nmetamorphoses, its refinements those of chemistry. We can neither plumb\nthe depths nor pierce the shades of its recesses. Therein it is hidden\nfrom the most far-seeing eyes, therein it takes a thousand imperceptible\nfolds. There it is often to itself invisible; it there conceives, there\nnourishes and rears, without being aware of it, numberless loves and\nhatreds, some so monstrous that when they are brought to light it\ndisowns them, and cannot resolve to avow them. In the night which covers\nit are born the ridiculous persuasions it has of itself, thence come its\nerrors, its ignorance, its silly mistakes; thence it is led to believe\nthat its passions which sleep are dead, and to think that it has lost\nall appetite for that of which it is sated. But this thick darkness\nwhich conceals it from itself does not hinder it from seeing that\nperfectly which is out of itself; and in this it resembles our eyes\nwhich behold all, and yet cannot set their own forms. In fact, in great\nconcerns and important matters when the violence of its desires\nsummons all its attention, it sees, feels, hears, imagines, suspects,\npenetrates, divines all: so that we might think that each of its\npassions had a magic power proper to it. Nothing is so close and strong\nas its attachments, which, in sight of the extreme misfortunes which\nthreaten it, it vainly attempts to break. Yet sometimes it effects that\nwithout trouble and quickly, which it failed to do with its whole power\nand in the course of years, whence we may fairly conclude that it is\nby itself that its desires are inflamed, rather than by the beauty and\nmerit of its objects, that its own taste embellishes and heightens them;\nthat it is itself the game it pursues, and that it follows eagerly\nwhen it runs after that upon which itself is eager. It is made up of\ncontraries. It is imperious and obedient, sincere and false, piteous\nand cruel, timid and bold. It has different desires according to the\ndiversity of temperaments, which turn and fix it sometimes upon riches,\nsometimes on pleasures. It changes according to our age, our fortunes,\nand our hopes; it is quite indifferent whether it has many or one,\nbecause it can split itself into many portions, and unite in one as\nit pleases. It is inconstant, and besides the changes which arise\nfrom strange causes it has an infinity born of itself, and of its own\nsubstance. It is inconstant through inconstancy, of lightness, love,\nnovelty, lassitude and distaste. It is capricious, and one sees it\nsometimes work with intense eagerness and with incredible labour to\nobtain things of little use to it which are even hurtful, but which it\npursues because it wishes for them. It is silly, and often throws its\nwhole application on the utmost frivolities. It finds all its pleasure\nin the dullest matters, and places its pride in the most contemptible.\nIt is seen in all states of life, and in all conditions; it lives\neverywhere and upon everything; it subsists on nothing; it accommodates\nitself either to things or to the want of them; it goes over to\nthose who are at war with it, enters into their designs, and, this is\nwonderful, it, with them, hates even itself; it conspires for its own\nloss, it works towards its own ruin--in fact, caring only to exist, and\nproviding that it may be, it will be its own enemy! We must therefore\nnot be surprised if it is sometimes united to the rudest austerity, and\nif it enters so boldly into partnership to destroy her, because when it\nis rooted out in one place it re-establishes itself in another. When it\nfancies that it abandons its pleasure it merely changes or suspends its\nenjoyment. When even it is conquered in its full flight, we find that\nit triumphs in its own defeat. Here then is the picture of self-love\nwhereof the whole of our life is but one long agitation. The sea is its\nliving image; and in the flux and reflux of its continuous waves there\nis a faithful expression of the stormy succession of its thoughts and of\nits eternal motion. (Edition of 1665, No. 1.)\n\nII.--Passions are only the different degrees of the heat or coldness of\nthe blood. (1665, No. 13.)\n\nIII.--Moderation in good fortune is but apprehension of the shame which\nfollows upon haughtiness, or a fear of losing what we have. (1665, No.\n18.)\n\nIV.--Moderation is like temperance in eating; we could eat more but we\nfear to make ourselves ill. (1665, No. 21.)\n\nV.--Everybody finds that to abuse in another which he finds worthy of\nabuse in himself. (1665, No. 33.)\n\nVI.--Pride, as if tired of its artifices and its different\nmetamorphoses, after having solely filled the divers parts of the comedy\nof life, exhibits itself with its natural face, and is discovered by\nhaughtiness; so much so that we may truly say that haughtiness is but\nthe flash and open declaration of pride. (1665, No. 37.)\n\nVII.--One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be\nmiserable. (1665, No. 53.)\n\nVIII.--When we do not find peace of mind (REPOS) in ourselves it is\nuseless to seek it elsewhere. (1665, No. 53.)\n\nIX.--One should be able to answer for one's fortune, so as to be able to\nanswer for what we shall do. (1665, No. 70.)\n\nX.--Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the soul is to the body\nwhich it animates. (1665, No. 77.)\n\nXI.--As one is never at liberty to love or to cease from loving, the\nlover cannot with justice complain of the inconstancy of his mistress,\nnor she of the fickleness of her lover. (1665, No. 81.)\n\nXII.--Justice in those judges who are moderate is but a love of their\nplace. (1665, No. 89.)\n\nXIII.--When we are tired of loving we are quite content if our mistress\nshould become faithless, to loose us from our fidelity. (1665, No. 85.)\n\nXIV.--The first impulse of joy which we feel at the happiness of our\nfriends arises neither from our natural goodness nor from friendship;\nit is the result of self-love, which flatters us with being lucky in our\nown turn, or in reaping something from the good fortune of our friends.\n(1665, No. 97.)\n\nXV.--In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which\nis not wholly displeasing to us. (1665, No. 99.)\n\n[This gave occasion to Swift's celebrated \"Verses on his own Death.\"\nThe four first are quoted opposite the title, then follow these lines:--\n\"This maxim more than all the rest, Is thought too base for human\nbreast; In all distresses of our friends, We first consult our private\nends; While nature kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance\nto please us.\"\n\nSee also Chesterfield's defence of this in his 129th letter; \"they who\nknow the deception and wickedness of the human heart will not be either\nromantic or blind enough to deny what Rochefoucauld and Swift have\naffirmed as a general truth.\"]\n\nXVI.--How shall we hope that another person will keep our secret if we\ndo not keep it ourselves. (1665, No. 100.)\n\nXVII.--As if it was not sufficient that self-love should have the power\nto change itself, it has added that of changing other objects, and\nthis it does in a very astonishing manner; for not only does it so well\ndisguise them that it is itself deceived, but it even changes the state\nand nature of things. Thus, when a female is adverse to us, and she\nturns her hate and persecution against us, self-love pronounces on her\nactions with all the severity of justice; it exaggerates the faults till\nthey are enormous, and looks at her good qualities in so disadvantageous\na light that they become more displeasing than her faults. If however\nthe same female becomes favourable to us, or certain of our interests\nreconcile her to us, our sole self interest gives her back the lustre\nwhich our hatred deprived her of. The bad qualities become effaced,\nthe good ones appear with a redoubled advantage; we even summon all our\nindulgence to justify the war she has made upon us. Now although all\npassions prove this truth, that of love exhibits it most clearly; for we\nmay see a lover moved with rage by the neglect or the infidelity of her\nwhom he loves, and meditating the utmost vengeance that his passion can\ninspire. Nevertheless as soon as the sight of his beloved has calmed the\nfury of his movements, his passion holds that beauty innocent; he only\naccuses himself, he condemns his condemnations, and by the miraculous\npower of selflove, he whitens the blackest actions of his mistress, and\ntakes from her all crime to lay it on himself.\n\n{No date or number is given for this maxim}\n\nXVIII.--There are none who press so heavily on others as the lazy ones,\nwhen they have satisfied their idleness, and wish to appear industrious.\n(1666, No. 91.)\n\nXIX.--The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride;\nit seems to nourish and augment it, it deprives us of knowledge of\nremedies which can solace our miseries and can cure our faults. (1665,\nNo. 102.)\n\nXX.--One has never less reason than when one despairs of finding it in\nothers. (1665, No. 103.)\n\nXXI.--Philosophers, and Seneca above all, have not diminished crimes by\ntheir precepts; they have only used them in the building up of pride.\n(1665, No. 105.)\n\nXXII.--It is a proof of little friendship not to perceive the growing\ncoolness of that of our friends. (1666, No. 97.)\n\nXXIII.--The most wise may be so in indifferent and ordinary matters, but\nthey are seldom so in their most serious affairs. (1665, No. 132.)\n\nXXIV.--The most subtle folly grows out of the most subtle wisdom. (1665,\nNo. 134.)\n\nXXV.--Sobriety is the love of health, or an incapacity to eat much.\n(1665, No. 135.)\n\nXXVI.--We never forget things so well as when we are tired of talking of\nthem. (1665, No. 144.)\n\nXXVII.--The praise bestowed upon us is at least useful in rooting us in\nthe practice of virtue. (1665, No. 155.)\n\nXXVIII.--Self-love takes care to prevent him whom we flatter from being\nhim who most flatters us. (1665, No. 157.)\n\nXXIX.--Men only blame vice and praise virtue from interest. (1665, No.\n151.)\n\nXXX.--We make no difference in the kinds of anger, although there is\nthat which is light and almost innocent, which arises from warmth of\ncomplexion, temperament, and another very criminal, which is, to speak\nproperly, the fury of pride. (1665, No. 159.)\n\nXXXI.--Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more\nvirtues than the common, but those only who have greater designs. (1665,\nNo. 161.)\n\nXXXII.--Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they make them bear\nwhat value they will, and one is forced to receive them according to\ntheir currency value, and not at their true worth. (1665, No. 165.)\n\n[See Burns{, For A' That An A' That}-- \"The rank is but the guinea's\nstamp, {The} man's {the gowd} for a' that.\" Also Farquhar and other\nparallel passages pointed out in Familiar Words.]\n\nXXXIII.--Natural ferocity makes fewer people cruel than self-love.\n(1665, No. 174.)\n\nXXXIV.--One may say of all our virtues as an Italian poet says of the\npropriety of women, that it is often merely the art of appearing chaste.\n(1665, No. 176.)\n\nXXXV.--There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious by their\nbrilliancy,* their number, or their excess; thus it happens that public\nrobbery is called financial skill, and the unjust capture of provinces\nis called a conquest. (1665, No. 192.)\n\n     *Some crimes may be excused by their brilliancy, such as\n     those of Jael, of Deborah, of Brutus, and of Charlotte\n     Corday--further than this the maxim is satire.\n\n\nXXXVI.--One never finds in man good or evil in excess. (1665, No. 201.)\n\nXXXVII.--Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not\neasily suspect others. (1665, No. {2}08.)\n\n{The text incorrectly numbers this maxim as 508. It is 208.}\n\nXXXVIII.--The pomp of funerals concerns rather the vanity of the living,\nthan the honour of the dead. (1665, No. 213.)\n\nXXXIX.--Whatever variety and change appears in the world, we may remark\na secret chain, and a regulated order of all time by Providence, which\nmakes everything follow in due rank and fall into its destined course.\n(1665, No. 225.)\n\nXL.--Intrepidity should sustain the heart in conspiracies in place of\nvalour which alone furnishes all the firmness which is necessary for the\nperils of war. (1665, No. 231.)\n\nXLI.--Those who wish to define victory by her birth will be tempted to\nimitate the poets, and to call her the Daughter of Heaven, since they\ncannot find her origin on earth. Truly she is produced from an infinity\nof actions, which instead of wishing to beget her, only look to the\nparticular interests of their masters, since all those who compose an\narmy, in aiming at their own rise and glory, produce a good so great and\ngeneral. (1665, No. 232.)\n\nXLII.--That man who has never been in danger cannot answer for his\ncourage. (1665, No. 236.)\n\nXLIII.--We more often place bounds on our gratitude than on our desires\nand our hopes. (1665, No. 241.)\n\nXLIV.--Imitation is always unhappy, for all which is counterfeit\ndispleases by the very things which charm us when they are original\n(Naturelles). (1665, No. 245.)\n\nXLV.--We do not regret the loss of our friends according to their\nmerits, but according to OUR wants, and the opinion with which we\nbelieved we had impressed them of our worth. (1665, No. 248.)\n\nXLVI.--It is very hard to separate the general goodness spread all over\nthe world from great cleverness. (1665, No. 252.)\n\nXLVII.--For us to be always good, others should believe that they cannot\nbehave wickedly to us with impunity. (1665, No. 254.)\n\nXLVIII.--A confidence in being able to please is often an infallible\nmeans of being displeasing. (1665, No. 256.)\n\nXLIX.--The confidence we have in ourselves arises in a great measure\nfrom that that we have in others. (1665, No. 258.)\n\nL.--There is a general revolution which changes the tastes of the mind\nas well as the fortunes of the world. (1665, No. 250.)\n\nLI.--Truth is foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for\nof whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful and perfect\nunless it be truly that she should be, and possess truly all that she\nshould have (1665, No. 260.)\n\n[Beauty is truth, truth beauty.{--John Keats, \"Ode on a a Grecian Urn,\"\n(1820), Stanza 5}]\n\nLII.--There are fine things which are more brilliant when unfinished\nthan when finished too much. (1665, No. 262.)\n\nLIII.--Magnanimity is a noble effort of pride which makes a man master\nof himself, to make him master of all things. (1665, No. 271.)\n\nLIV.--Luxury and too refined a policy in states are a sure presage of\ntheir fall, because all parties looking after their own interest turn\naway from the public good. (1665, No. 282.)\n\nLV.--Of all passions that which is least known to us is idleness; she\nis the most ardent and evil of all, although her violence may be\ninsensible, and the evils she causes concealed; if we consider her\npower attentively we shall find that in all encounters she makes herself\nmistress of our sentiments, our interests, and our pleasures; like the\n(fabled) Remora, she can stop the greatest vessels, she is a hidden\nrock, more dangerous in the most important matters than sudden squalls\nand the most violent tempests. The repose of idleness is a magic charm\nwhich suddenly suspends the most ardent pursuits and the most obstinate\nresolutions. In fact to give a true notion of this passion we must add\nthat idleness, like a beatitude of the soul, consoles us for all losses\nand fills the vacancy of all our wants. (1665, No. 290.)\n\nLVI.--We are very fond of reading others' characters, but we do not like\nto be read ourselves. (1665, No. 296.)\n\nLVII.--What a tiresome malady is that which forces one to preserve your\nhealth by a severe regimen. (Ibid, No. 298.)\n\nLVIII.--It is much easier to take love when one is free, than to get rid\nof it after having taken it. (1665, No. 300.)\n\nLIX.--Women for the most part surrender themselves more from weakness\nthan from passion. Whence it is that bold and pushing men succeed better\nthan others, although they are not so loveable. (1665, No. 301.)\n\nLX.--Not to love is in love, an infallible means of being beloved.\n(1665, No. 302.)\n\nLXI.--The sincerity which lovers and mistresses ask that both should\nknow when they cease to love each other, arises much less from a wish\nto be warned of the cessation of love, than from a desire to be assured\nthat they are beloved although no one denies it. (1665, No. 303.)\n\nLXII.--The most just comparison of love is that of a fever, and we have\nno power over either, as to its violence or its duration. (1665, No.\n305.)\n\nLXIII.--The greatest skill of the least skilful is to know how to submit\nto the direction of another. (1665, No. 309.)\n\nLXIV.--We always fear to see those whom we love when we have been\nflirting with others. (16{74}, No. 372.)\n\nLXV.--We ought to console ourselves for our faults when we have strength\nenough to own them. (16{74}, No. 375.)\n\n{The date of the previous two maxims is incorrectly cited as 1665 in\nthe text. I found this date immediately suspect because the translators'\nintroduction states that the 1665 edition only had 316 maxims. In fact,\nthe two maxims only appeared in the fourth of the first five editions\n(1674).}\n\n\n\n\nSECOND SUPPLEMENT.\n\nREFLECTIONS, EXTRACTED FROM MS. LETTERS IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY.*\n\n     *A La Bibliotheque Du Roi, it is difficult at present (June\n     1871) to assign a name to the magnificent collection of\n     books in Paris, the property of the nation.\n\n\nLXVI.--Interest is the soul of self-love, in as much as when the body\ndeprived of its soul is without sight, feeling or knowledge, without\nthought or movement, so self-love, riven so to speak from its interest,\nneither sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor moves; thus it is that the same\nman who will run over land and sea for his own interest becomes suddenly\nparalyzed when engaged for that of others; from this arises that sudden\ndulness and, as it were, death, with which we afflict those to whom we\nspeak of our own matters; from this also their sudden resurrection when\nin our narrative we relate something concerning them; from this we find\nin our conversations and business that a man becomes dull or bright\njust as his own interest is near to him or distant from him. (Letter To\nMadame De Sable, Ms., Fol. 211.)\n\nLXVII.--Why we cry out so much against maxims which lay bare the heart\nof man, is because we fear that our own heart shall be laid bare. (Maxim\n103, MS., fol. 310.*)\n\n     *The reader will recognise in these extracts portions of the\n     Maxims previously given, sometimes the author has carefully\n     polished them; at other times the words are identical. Our\n     numbers will indicate where they are to be found in the\n     foregoing collection.\n\n\nLXVIII.--Hope and fear are inseparable. (To Madame De Sable, Ms., Fol.\n222, MAX. 168.)\n\nLXIX.--It is a common thing to hazard life to escape dishonour;\nbut, when this is done, the actor takes very little pain to make the\nenterprise succeed in which he is engaged, and certain it is that they\nwho hazard their lives to take a city or to conquer a province are\nbetter officers, have more merit, and wider and more useful, views than\nthey who merely expose themselves to vindicate their honour; it is very\ncommon to find people of the latter class, very rare to find those of\nthe former. (Letter To M. Esprit, Ms., Fol. 173, MAX. 219.)\n\nLXX.--The taste changes, but the will remains the same. (To Madame De\nSable, Fol. 223, Max. 252.)\n\nLXXI.--The power which women whom we love have over us is greater than\nthat which we have over ourselves. (To The Same, Ms., Fol. 211, Max.\n259)\n\nLXXII.--That which makes us believe so easily that others have defects\nis that we all so easily believe what we wish. (To The Same, Ms., Fol.\n223, Max. 397.)\n\nLXXIII.--I am perfectly aware that good sense and fine wit are tedious\nto every age, but tastes are not always the same, and what is good\nat one time will not seem so at another. This makes me think that few\npersons know how to be old. (To The Same, Fol. 202, Max. 423.)\n\nLXXIV.--God has permitted, to punish man for his original sin, that he\nshould be so fond of his self-love, that he should be tormented by it in\nall the actions of his life. (Ms., Fol. 310, Max. 494.)\n\nLXXV.--And so far it seems to me the philosophy of a lacquey can go; I\nbelieve that all gaity in that state of life is very doubtful indeed.\n(To Madame De Sable, Fol. 161, Max. 504.)\n\n[In the maxim cited the author relates how a footman about to be broken\non the wheel danced on the scaffold. He seems to think that in his day\nthe life of such servants was so miserable that their merriment was very\ndoubtful.]\n\n\n\n\nTHIRD SUPPLEMENT\n\n[The fifty following Maxims are taken from the Sixth Edition of the\nPensees De La Rochefoucauld, published by Claude Barbin, in 1693, more\nthan twelve years after the death of the author (17th May, 1680). The\nreader will find some repetitions, but also some very valuable maxims.]\n\nLXXVI.--Many persons wish to be devout; but no one wishes to be humble.\n\nLXXVII.--The labour of the body frees us from the pains of the mind, and\nthus makes the poor happy.\n\nLXXVIII.--True penitential sorrows (mortifications) are those which are\nnot known, vanity renders the others easy enough.\n\nLXXIX.--Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer\nhim his sacrifices.\n\nLXXX.--Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make\na fool content; that is why most men are miserable.\n\nLXXXI.--We trouble ourselves less to become happy, than to make others\nbelieve we are so.\n\nLXXXII.--It is more easy to extinguish the first desire than to satisfy\nthose which follow.\n\nLXXXIII.--Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.\n\nLXXXIV.--The great ones of the earth can neither command health of body\nnor repose of mind, and they buy always at too dear a price the good\nthey can acquire.\n\nLXXXV.--Before strongly desiring anything we should examine what\nhappiness he has who possesses it.\n\nLXXXVI.--A true friend is the greatest of all goods, and that of which\nwe think least of acquiring.\n\nLXXXVII.--Lovers do not wish to see the faults of their mistresses until\ntheir enchantment is at an end.\n\nLXXXVIII.--Prudence and love are not made for each other; in the ratio\nthat love increases, prudence diminishes.\n\nLXXXIX.--It is sometimes pleasing to a husband to have a jealous wife;\nhe hears her always speaking of the beloved object.\n\nXC.--How much is a woman to be pitied who is at the same time possessed\nof virtue and love!\n\nXCI.--The wise man finds it better not to enter the encounter than to\nconquer.\n\n[Somewhat similar to Goldsmith's sage-- \"Who quits {a} world where\nstrong temptations try, And since 'tis hard to co{mbat}, learns to\nfly.\"]\n\nXCII.--It is more necessary to study men than books.\n\n[\"The proper study of mankind is man.\"--Pope {Essay On Man, (1733),\nEpistle II, line 2}.]\n\nXCIII.--Good and evil ordinarily come to those who have most of one or\nthe other.\n\nXCIV.--The accent and character of one's native country dwells in the\nmind and heart as on the tongue. (Repitition Of Maxim 342.)\n\nXCV.--The greater part of men have qualities which, like those of\nplants, are discovered by chance. (Repitition Of Maxim 344.)\n\nXCVI.--A good woman is a hidden treasure; he who discovers her will do\nwell not to boast about it. (See Maxim 368.)\n\nXCVII.--Most women do not weep for the loss of a lover to show that they\nhave been loved so much as to show that they are worth being loved. (See\nMaxim 362.)\n\nXCVIII.--There are many virtuous women who are weary of the part they\nhave played. (See Maxim 367.)\n\nXCIX.--If we think we love for love's sake we are much mistaken. (See\nMaxim 374.)\n\nC.--The restraint we lay upon ourselves to be constant, is not much\nbetter than an inconstancy. (See Maxim 369, 381.)\n\nCI.--There are those who avoid our jealousy, of whom we ought to be\njealous. (See Maxim 359.)\n\nCII.--Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with\nit. (See Maxim 361.)\n\nCIII.--When we love too much it is difficult to discover when we have\nceased to be beloved.\n\nCIV.--We know very well that we should not talk about our wives, but we\ndo not remember that it is not so well to speak of ourselves. (See Maxim\n364.)\n\nCV.--Chance makes us known to others and to ourselves. (See Maxim 345.)\n\nCVI.--We find very few people of good sense, except those who are of our\nown opinion. (See Maxim 347.)\n\nCVII.--We commonly praise the good hearts of those who admire us. (See\nMaxim 356.)\n\nCVIII.--Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised.\n\nCIX.--Little minds are wounded by the smallest things. (See Maxim 357.)\n\nCX.--There are certain faults which placed in a good light please more\nthan perfection itself. (See Maxim 354.)\n\nCXI.--That which makes us so bitter against those who do us a shrewd\nturn, is because they think themselves more clever than we are. (See\nMaxim 350.)\n\nCXII.--We are always bored by those whom we bore. (See Maxim 352.)\n\nCXIII.--The harm that others do us is often less than that we do\nourselves. (See Maxim 363.)\n\nCXIV.--It is never more difficult to speak well than when we are ashamed\nof being silent.\n\nCXV.--Those faults are always pardonable that we have the courage to\navow.\n\nCXVI.--The greatest fault of penetration is not that it goes to the\nbottom of a matter--but beyond it. (See Maxim 377.)\n\nCXVII.--We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.\n(See Maxim 378.)\n\nCXVIII.--When our merit declines, our taste declines also. (See Maxim\n379.)\n\nCXIX.--Fortune discovers our vices and our virtues, as the light makes\nobjects plain to the sight. (See Maxim 380.)\n\nCXX.--Our actions are like rhymed verse-ends (Bouts-Rimes) which\neveryone turns as he pleases. (See Maxim 382.)\n\nCXXI.--There is nothing more natural, nor more deceptive, than to\nbelieve that we are beloved.\n\nCXXII.--We would rather see those to whom we have done a benefit, than\nthose who have done us one.\n\nCXXIII.--It is more difficult to hide the opinions we have than to feign\nthose which we have not.\n\nCXXIV.--Renewed friendships require more care than those that have never\nbeen broken.\n\nCXXV.--A man to whom no one is pleasing is much more unhappy than one\nwho pleases nobody.\n\n\n\n\nREFLECTIONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, BY THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD\n\nI. On Confidence.\n\nThough sincerity and confidence have many points of resemblance, they\nhave yet many points of difference.\n\nSincerity is an openness of heart, which shows us what we are, a love\nof truth, a dislike to deception, a wish to compensate our faults and to\nlessen them by the merit of confessing them.\n\nConfidence leaves us less liberty, its rules are stricter, it requires\nmore prudence and reticence, and we are not always free to give it. It\nrelates not only to ourselves, since our interests are often mixed\nup with those of others; it requires great delicacy not to expose\nour friends in exposing ourselves, not to draw upon their goodness to\nenhance the value of what we give.\n\nConfidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay\nto their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which\ngives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily\nsubmit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence,\nso necessary to man. It is in society the link between acquaintance and\nfriendship. I only wish to state its limits to make it true and real.\nI would that it was always sincere, always discreet, and that it had\nneither weakness nor interest. I know it is hard to place proper limits\non being taken into all our friends' confidence, and taking them into\nall ours.\n\nMost frequently we make confidants from vanity, a love of talking, a\nwish to win the confidence of others, and make an exchange of secrets.\n\nSome may have a motive for confiding in us, towards whom we have no\nmotive for confiding. With them we discharge the obligation in keeping\ntheir secrets and trusting them with small confidences.\n\nOthers whose fidelity we know trust nothing to us, but we confide in\nthem by choice and inclination.\n\nWe should hide from them nothing that concerns us, we should always show\nthem with equal truth, our virtues and our vices, without exaggerating\nthe one or diminishing the other. We should make it a rule never to\nhave half confidences. They always embarrass those who give them, and\ndissatisfy those who receive them. They shed an uncertain light on what\nwe want hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to know\nmore, giving them leave to consider themselves free to talk of what they\nhave guessed. It is far safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be\nsilent when we have begun to tell. There are other rules to be observed\nin matters confided to us, all are important, to all prudence and trust\nare essential.\n\nEveryone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does\nnot agree as to the nature and importance of secresy. Too often we\nconsult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid.\nThere are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them\nwill not last for ever.\n\nWith those friends whose truth we know we have the closest intimacy.\nThey have always spoken unreservedly to us, we should always do the same\nto them. They know our habits and connexions, and see too clearly not\nto perceive the slightest change. They may have elsewhere learnt what we\nhave promised not to tell. It is not in our power to tell them what has\nbeen entrusted to us, though it might tend to their interest to know it.\nWe feel as confident of them as of ourselves, and we are reduced to the\nhard fate of losing their friendship, which is dear to us, or of being\nfaithless as regards a secret. This is doubtless the hardest test of\nfidelity, but it should not move an honest man; it is then that he can\nsacrifice himself to others. His first duty is to rigidly keep his trust\nin its entirety. He should not only control and guard his and his voice,\nbut even his lighter talk, so that nothing be seen in his conversation\nor manner that could direct the curiosity of others towards that which\nhe wishes to conceal.\n\nWe have often need of strength and prudence wherewith to oppose the\nexigencies of most of our friends who make a claim on our confidence,\nand seek to know all about us. We should never allow them to acquire\nthis unexceptionable right. There are accidents and circumstances which\ndo not fall in their cognizance; if they complain, we should endure\ntheir complaints and excuse ourselves with gentleness, but if they are\nstill unreasonable, we should sacrifice their friendship to our duty,\nand choose between two inevitable evils, the one reparable, the other\nirreparable.\n\nII. On Difference of Character.\n\nAlthough all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius,\nyet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are\nunlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees\ndistant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest,\nsees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad,\njust and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often\nfinds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others.\n\nA lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable,\nand natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with\nall appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from\nits own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.\n\nA clever, pliant, winning mind knows how to avoid and overcome\ndifficulties. Bending easily to what it wants, it understands the\ninclination and temper it is dealing with, and by managing their\ninterests it advances and establishes its own.\n\nA well regulated mind sees all things as they should be seen, appraises\nthem at their proper value, turns them to its own advantage, and adheres\nfirmly to its own opinions as it knows all their force and weight.\n\nA difference exists between a working mind and a business-like mind. We\ncan undertake business without turning it to our own interest. Some are\nclever only in what does not concern them, and the reverse in all that\ndoes. There are others again whose cleverness is limited to their own\nbusiness, and who know how to turn everything to their own advantage.\n\nIt is possible to have a serious turn of mind, and yet to talk\npleasantly and cheerfully. This class of mind is suited to all persons\nin all times of life. Young persons have usually a cheerful and\nsatirical turn, untempered by seriousness, thus often making themselves\ndisagreeable.\n\nNo part is easier to play than that of being always pleasant; and the\napplause we sometimes receive in censuring others is not worth being\nexposed to the chance of offending them when they are out of temper.\n\nSatire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental\nqualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear\nthose who use it too much, yet satire should be allowed when unmixed\nwith spite, and when the person satirised can join in the satire.\n\nIt is unfortunate to have a satirical turn without affecting to be\npleased or without loving to jest. It requires much adroitness to\ncontinue satirical without falling into one of these extremes.\n\nRaillery is a kind of mirth which takes possession of the imagination,\nand shows every object in an absurd light; wit combines more or less\nsoftness or harshness.\n\nThere is a kind of refined and flattering raillery that only hits the\nfaults that persons admit, which understands how to hide the praise it\ngives under the appearance of blame, and shows the good while feigning a\nwish to hide it.\n\nAn acute mind and a cunning mind are very dissimilar. The first always\npleases; it is unfettered, it perceives the most delicate and sees the\nmost imperceptible matters. A cunning spirit never goes straight, it\nendeavours to secure its object by byeways and short cuts. This conduct\nis soon found out, it always gives rise to distrust and never reaches\ngreatness.\n\nThere is a difference between an ardent and a brilliant mind, a fiery\nspirit travels further and faster, while a brilliant mind is sparkling,\nattractive, accurate.\n\nGentleness of mind is an easy and accommodating manner which always\npleases when not insipid.\n\nA mind full of details devotes itself to the management and regulation\nof the smallest particulars it meets with. This distinction is usually\nlimited to little matters, yet it is not absolutely incompatible with\ngreatness, and when these two qualities are united in the same mind they\nraise it infinitely above others.\n\nThe expression \"Bel Esprit\" is much perverted, for all that one can say\nof the different kinds of mind meet together in the \"Bel Esprit.\" Yet as\nthe epithet is bestowed on an infinite number of bad poets and tedious\nauthors, it is more often used to ridicule than to praise.\n\nThere are yet many other epithets for the mind which mean the same\nthing, the difference lies in the tone and manner of saying them, but\nas tones and manner cannot appear in writing I shall not go into\ndistinctions I cannot explain. Custom explains this in saying that a\nman has wit, has much wit, that he is a great wit; there are tones and\nmanners which make all the difference between phrases which seem all\nalike on paper, and yet express a different order of mind.\n\nSo we say that a man has only one kind of wit, that he has several, that\nhe has every variety of wit.\n\nOne can be a fool with much wit, and one need not be a fool even with\nvery little wit.\n\nTo have much mind is a doubtful expression. It may mean every class of\nmind that can be mentioned, it may mean none in particular. It may mean\nthat he talks sensibly while he acts foolishly. We may have a mind, but\na narrow one. A mind may be fitted for some things, not for others. We\nmay have a large measure of mind fitted for nothing, and one is often\ninconvenienced with much mind; still of this kind of mind we may say\nthat it is sometimes pleasing in society.\n\nThough the gifts of the mind are infinite, they can, it seems to me, be\nthus classified.\n\nThere are some so beautiful that everyone can see and feel their beauty.\n\nThere are some lovely, it is true, but which are wearisome.\n\nThere are some which are lovely, which all the world admire, but without\nknowing why.\n\nThere are some so refined and delicate that few are capable even of\nremarking all their beauties.\n\nThere are others which, though imperfect, yet are produced with such\nskill, and sustained and managed with such sense and grace, that they\neven deserve to be admired.\n\nIII. On Taste.\n\nSome persons have more wit than taste, others have more taste than wit.\nThere is greater vanity and caprice in taste than in wit.\n\nThe word taste has different meanings, which it is easy to mistake.\nThere is a difference between the taste which in certain objects has\nan attraction for us, and the taste that makes us understand and\ndistinguish the qualities we judge by.\n\nWe may like a comedy without having a sufficiently fine and delicate\ntaste to criticise it accurately. Some tastes lead us imperceptibly to\nobjects, from which others carry us away by their force or intensity.\n\nSome persons have bad taste in everything, others have bad taste only\nin some things, but a correct and good taste in matters within their\ncapacity. Some have peculiar taste, which they know to be bad, but which\nthey still follow. Some have a doubtful taste, and let chance decide,\ntheir indecision makes them change, and they are affected with pleasure\nor weariness on their friends' judgment. Others are always prejudiced,\nthey are the slaves of their tastes, which they adhere to in everything.\nSome know what is good, and are horrified at what is not; their opinions\nare clear and true, and they find the reason for their taste in their\nmind and understanding.\n\nSome have a species of instinct (the source of which they are ignorant\nof), and decide all questions that come before them by its aid, and\nalways decide rightly.\n\nThese follow their taste more than their intelligence, because they\ndo not permit their temper and self-love to prevail over their natural\ndiscernment. All they do is in harmony, all is in the same spirit.\nThis harmony makes them decide correctly on matters, and form a correct\nestimate of their value. But speaking generally there are few who have\na taste fixed and independent of that of their friends, they follow\nexample and fashion which generally form the standard of taste.\n\nIn all the diversities of taste that we discern, it is very rare and\nalmost impossible to meet with that sort of good taste that knows how to\nset a price on the particular, and yet understands the right value that\nshould be placed on all. Our knowledge is too limited, and that correct\ndiscernment of good qualities which goes to form a correct judgment\nis too seldom to be met with except in regard to matters that do not\nconcern us.\n\nAs regards ourselves our taste has not this all-important discernment.\nPreoccupation, trouble, all that concern us, present it to us in another\naspect. We do not see with the same eyes what does and what does not\nrelate to us. Our taste is guided by the bent of our self-love and\ntemper, which supplies us with new views which we adapt to an infinite\nnumber of changes and uncertainties. Our taste is no longer our own,\nwe cease to control it, without our consent it changes, and the same\nobjects appear to us in such divers aspects that ultimately we fail to\nperceive what we have seen and heard.\n\nIV. On Society.\n\nIn speaking of society my plan is not to speak of friendship, for,\nthough they have some connection, they are yet very different. The\nformer has more in it of greatness and humility, and the greatest merit\nof the latter is to resemble the former.\n\nFor the present I shall speak of that particular kind of intercourse\nthat gentlemen should have with each other. It would be idle to show how\nfar society is essential to men: all seek for it, and all find it, but\nfew adopt the method of making it pleasant and lasting.\n\nEveryone seeks to find his pleasure and his advantage at the expense of\nothers. We prefer ourselves always to those with whom we intend to\nlive, and they almost always perceive the preference. It is this which\ndisturbs and destroys society. We should discover a means to hide this\nlove of selection since it is too ingrained in us to be in our power to\ndestroy. We should make our pleasure that of other persons, to humour,\nnever to wound their self-love.\n\nThe mind has a great part to do in so great a work, but it is not merely\nsufficient for us to guide it in the different courses it should hold.\n\nThe agreement we meet between minds would not keep society together for\nlong if she was not governed and sustained by good sense, temper, and by\nthe consideration which ought to exist between persons who have to live\ntogether.\n\nIt sometimes happens that persons opposite in temper and mind become\nunited. They doubtless hold together for different reasons, which cannot\nlast for long. Society may subsist between those who are our inferiors\nby birth or by personal qualities, but those who have these advantages\nshould not abuse them. They should seldom let it be perceived that they\nserve to instruct others. They should let their conduct show that\nthey, too, have need to be guided and led by reason, and accommodate\nthemselves as far as possible to the feeling and the interests of the\nothers.\n\nTo make society pleasant, it is essential that each should retain\nhis freedom of action. A man should not see himself, or he should see\nhimself without dependence, and at the same time amuse himself. He\nshould have the power of separating himself without that separation\nbringing any change on the society. He should have the power to pass by\none and the other, if he does not wish to expose himself to occasional\nembarrassments; and he should remember that he is often bored when he\nbelieves he has not the power even to bore. He should share in what he\nbelieves to be the amusement of persons with whom he wishes to live, but\nhe should not always be liable to the trouble of providing them.\n\nComplaisance is essential in society, but it should have its limits,\nit becomes a slavery when it is extreme. We should so render a free\nconsent, that in following the opinion of our friends they should\nbelieve that they follow ours.\n\nWe should readily excuse our friends when their faults are born with\nthem, and they are less than their good qualities. We should often avoid\nto show what they have said, and what they have left unsaid. We should\ntry to make them perceive their faults, so as to give them the merit of\ncorrecting them.\n\nThere is a kind of politeness which is necessary in the intercourse\namong gentlemen, it makes them comprehend badinage, and it keeps\nthem from using and employing certain figures of speech, too rude\nand unrefined, which are often used thoughtlessly when we hold to our\nopinion with too much warmth.\n\nThe intercourse of gentlemen cannot subsist without a certain kind of\nconfidence; this should be equal on both sides. Each should have an\nappearance of sincerity and of discretion which never causes the fear of\nanything imprudent being said.\n\nThere should be some variety in wit. Those who have only one kind of\nwit cannot please for long unless they can take different roads, and not\nboth use the same talents, thus adding to the pleasure of society, and\nkeeping the same harmony that different voices and different instruments\nshould observe in music; and as it is detrimental to the quiet of\nsociety, that many persons should have the same interests, it is yet as\nnecessary for it that their interests should not be different.\n\nWe should anticipate what can please our friends, find out how to be\nuseful to them so as to exempt them from annoyance, and when we cannot\navert evils, seem to participate in them, insensibly obliterate without\nattempting to destroy them at a blow, and place agreeable objects in\ntheir place, or at least such as will interest them. We should talk of\nsubjects that concern them, but only so far as they like, and we\nshould take great care where we draw the line. There is a species of\npoliteness, and we may say a similar species of humanity, which does not\nenter too quickly into the recesses of the heart. It often takes pains\nto allow us to see all that our friends know, while they have still the\nadvantage of not knowing to the full when we have penetrated the depth\nof the heart.\n\nThus the intercourse between gentlemen at once gives them familiarity\nand furnishes them with an infinite number of subjects on which to talk\nfreely.\n\nFew persons have sufficient tact and good sense fairly to appreciate\nmany matters that are essential to maintain society. We desire to\nturn away at a certain point, but we do not want to be mixed up in\neverything, and we fear to know all kinds of truth.\n\nAs we should stand at a certain distance to view objects, so we should\nalso stand at a distance to observe society; each has its proper point\nof view from which it should be regarded. It is quite right that it\nshould not be looked at too closely, for there is hardly a man who in\nall matters allows himself to be seen as he really is.\n\nV. On Conversation.\n\nThe reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that each\nthinks more of what he desires to say, than of what the others say, and\nthat we make bad listeners when we want to speak.\n\nYet it is necessary to listen to those who talk, we should give them the\ntime they want, and let them say even senseless things; never contradict\nor interrupt them; on the contrary, we should enter into their mind and\ntaste, illustrate their meaning, praise anything they say that deserves\npraise, and let them see we praise more from our choice than from\nagreement with them.\n\nTo please others we should talk on subjects they like and that interest\nthem, avoid disputes upon indifferent matters, seldom ask questions, and\nnever let them see that we pretend to be better informed than they are.\n\nWe should talk in a more or less serious manner, and upon more or less\nabstruse subjects, according to the temper and understanding of the\npersons we talk with, and readily give them the advantage of deciding\nwithout obliging them to answer when they are not anxious to talk.\n\nAfter having in this way fulfilled the duties of politeness, we can\nspeak our opinions to our listeners when we find an opportunity without\na sign of presumption or opinionatedness. Above all things we should\navoid often talking of ourselves and giving ourselves as an example;\nnothing is more tiresome than a man who quotes himself for everything.\n\nWe cannot give too great study to find out the manner and the capacity\nof those with whom we talk, so as to join in the conversation of those\nwho have more than ourselves without hurting by this preference the\nwishes or interests of others.\n\nThen we should modestly use all the modes abovementioned to show our\nthoughts to them, and make them, if possible, believe that we take our\nideas from them.\n\nWe should never say anything with an air of authority, nor show\nany superiority of mind. We should avoid far-fetched expressions,\nexpressions hard or forced, and never let the words be grander than the\nmatter.\n\nIt is not wrong to retain our opinions if they are reasonable, but we\nshould yield to reason, wherever she appears and from whatever side\nshe comes, she alone should govern our opinions, we should follow her\nwithout opposing the opinions of others, and without seeming to ignore\nwhat they say.\n\nIt is dangerous to seek to be always the leader of the conversation, and\nto push a good argument too hard, when we have found one. Civility often\nhides half its understanding, and when it meets with an opinionated man\nwho defends the bad side, spares him the disgrace of giving way.\n\nWe are sure to displease when we speak too long and too often of one\nsubject, and when we try to turn the conversation upon subjects that we\nthink more instructive than others, we should enter indifferently upon\nevery subject that is agreeable to others, stopping where they wish, and\navoiding all they do not agree with.\n\nEvery kind of conversation, however witty it may be, is not equally\nfitted for all clever persons; we should select what is to their taste\nand suitable to their condition, their sex, their talents, and also\nchoose the time to say it.\n\nWe should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find\nthe person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to\nthe purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent. There is\nan eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn, there is a\nsilence of discretion and of respect. In a word, there is a tone, an\nair, a manner, which renders everything in conversation agreeable or\ndisagreeable, refined or vulgar.\n\nBut it is given to few persons to keep this secret well. Those who lay\ndown rules too often break them, and the safest we are able to give is\nto listen much, to speak little, and to say nothing that will ever give\nground for regret.\n\nVI. Falsehood.\n\nWe are false in different ways. There are some men who are false from\nwishing always to appear what they are not. There are some who have\nbetter faith, who are born false, who deceive themselves, and who never\nsee themselves as they really are; to some is given a true understanding\nand a false taste, others have a false understanding and some\ncorrectness in taste; there are some who have not any falsity either in\ntaste or mind. These last are very rare, for to speak generally, there\nis no one who has not some falseness in some corner of his mind or his\ntaste.\n\nWhat makes this falseness so universal, is that as our qualities are\nuncertain and confused, so too, are our tastes; we do not see things\nexactly as they are, we value them more or less than they are worth,\nand do not bring them into unison with ourselves in a manner which suits\nthem or suits our condition or qualities.\n\nThis mistake gives rise to an infinite number of falsities in the taste\nand in the mind. Our self-love is flattered by all that presents itself\nto us under the guise of good.\n\nBut as there are many kinds of good which affect our vanity and our\ntemper, so they are often followed from custom or advantage. We follow\nbecause the others follow, without considering that the same feeling\nought not to be equally embarrassing to all kinds of persons, and that\nit should attach itself more or less firmly, according as persons agree\nmore or less with those who follow them.\n\nWe dread still more to show falseness in taste than in mind. Gentleness\nshould approve without prejudice what deserves to be approved, follow\nwhat deserves to be followed, and take offence at nothing. But there\nshould be great distinction and great accuracy. We should distinguish\nbetween what is good in the abstract and what is good for ourselves, and\nalways follow in reason the natural inclination which carries us towards\nmatters that please us.\n\nIf men only wished to excel by the help of their own talents, and in\nfollowing their duty, there would be nothing false in their taste or in\ntheir conduct. They would show what they were, they would judge matters\nby their lights, and they would attract by their reason. There would be\na discernment in their views, in their sentiments, their taste would\nbe true, it would come to them direct, and not from others, they would\nfollow from choice and not from habit or chance. If we are false in\nadmiring what should not be admired, it is oftener from envy that we\naffix a value to qualities which are good in themselves, but which do\nnot become us. A magistrate is false when he flatters himself he is\nbrave, and that he will be able to be bold in certain cases. He should\nbe as firm and stedfast in a plot which ought to be stifled without fear\nof being false, as he would be false and absurd in fighting a duel about\nit.\n\nA woman may like science, but all sciences are not suitable for her, and\nthe doctrines of certain sciences never become her, and when applied by\nher are always false.\n\nWe should allow reason and good sense to fix the value of things, they\nshould determine our taste and give things the merit they deserve, and\nthe importance it is fitting we should give them. But nearly all men are\ndeceived in the price and in the value, and in these mistakes there is\nalways a kind of falseness.\n\nVII. On Air and Manner.\n\nThere is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each\nindividual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another.\n\nWe should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon\nit, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the\nmajority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air\nand manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They\nare changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should\nimitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it.\nIn this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty.\nThey have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being\nin reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are\nnot.\n\nAll men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek\nfor an air other than their own, and a mind different from what\nthey possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make\nexperiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one\nperson will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste\nor manners, and that there are no good copies.\n\nFew men, nevertheless, can have unison in many matters without being\na copy of each other, if each follow his natural turn of mind. But in\ngeneral a person will not wholly follow it. He loves to imitate. We\noften imitate the same person without perceiving it, and we neglect our\nown good qualities for the good qualities of others, which generally do\nnot suit us.\n\nI do not pretend, from what I say, that each should so wrap himself up\nin himself as not to be able to follow example, or to add to his own,\nuseful and serviceable habits, which nature has not given him. Arts and\nsciences may be proper for the greater part of those who are capable for\nthem. Good manners and politeness are proper for all the world. But, yet\nacquired qualities should always have a certain agreement and a certain\nunion with our own natural qualities, which they imperceptibly extend\nand increase. We are elevated to a rank and dignity above ourselves. We\nare often engaged in a new profession for which nature has not adapted\nus. All these conditions have each an air which belong to them, but\nwhich does not always agree with our natural manner. This change of our\nfortune often changes our air and our manners, and augments the air of\ndignity, which is always false when it is too marked, and when it is not\nunited and amalgamated with that which nature has given us. We should\nunite and blend them together, and thus render them such that they can\nnever be separated.\n\nWe should not speak of all subjects in one tone and in the same manner.\nWe do not march at the head of a regiment as we walk on a promenade;\nand we should use the same style in which we should naturally speak of\ndifferent things in the same way, with the same difference as we should\nwalk, but always naturally, and as is suitable, either at the head of\na regiment or on a promenade. There are some who are not content to\nabandon the air and manner natural to them to assume those of the rank\nand dignities to which they have arrived. There are some who assume\nprematurely the air of the dignities and rank to which they aspire.\nHow many lieutenant-generals assume to be marshals of France, how many\nbarristers vainly repeat the style of the Chancellor and how many female\ncitizens give themselves the airs of duchesses.\n\nBut what we are most often vexed at is that no one knows how to conform\nhis air and manners with his appearance, nor his style and words with\nhis thoughts and sentiments, that every one forgets himself and how far\nhe is insensibly removed from the truth. Nearly every one falls into\nthis fault in some way. No one has an ear sufficiently fine to mark\nperfectly this kind of cadence.\n\nThousands of people with good qualities are displeasing; thousands\npleasing with far less abilities, and why? Because the first wish to\nappear to be what they are not, the second are what they appear.\n\nSome of the advantages or disadvantages that we have received from\nnature please in proportion as we know the air, the style, the manner,\nthe sentiments that coincide with our condition and our appearance, and\ndisplease in the proportion they are removed from that point.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\nTHE LETTER R PRECEDING A REFERENCE REFERS TO THE REFLECTIONS, THE ROMAN\nNUMERALS REFER TO THE SUPPLEMENTS.\n\n\n\n  Ability, 162, 165, 199, 245, 283, 288. SEE Cleverness\n  ------, Sovereign, 244.\n  Absence, 276.\n  Accent, country, 342, XCIV.\n  Accidents, 59, 310.\n  Acquaintances, 426. SEE FRIENDS.\n  Acknowledgements, 225.\n  Actions, 1, 7, 57, 58, 160, 161, 382, 409, CXX.\n  Actors, 256.\n  Admiration, 178, 294, 474.\n  Adroitness of mind, R.II.\n  Adversity, 25.\n  -------- of Friends, XV.\n  Advice, 110, 116, 283, 378, CXVII.\n  Affairs, 453, R II.\n  Affectation, 134, 493.\n  Affections, 232.\n  Afflictions, 233, 355, 362, 493, XCVII, XV.\n  Age, 222, 405, LXXIII. SEE Old Age.\n  Agreeableness, 255, R.V.\n  Agreement, 240.\n  Air, 399, 495, R.7.\n  -- Of a Citizen, 393.\n  Ambition, 24, 91, 246, 293, 490.\n  Anger, XXX.\n  Application, 41, 243.\n  Appearances, 64, 166, 199, 256, 302, 431, 457, R.VII.\n  ----------, Conformity of Manners with, R.7.\n  Applause, 272.\n  Approbation, 51, 280.\n  Artifices, 117, 124, 125, 126, R.II.\n  Astonishment, 384.\n  Avarice, 167, 491, 492.\n\n\n\n  Ballads, 211.\n  Beauty, 240, 474, 497, LI.\n  ------ of the Mind, R.II.\n  Bel esprit defined, R.II.\n  Benefits, 14, 298, 299, 301, CXXII.\n  Benefactors, 96, 317, CXXII.\n  Blame, CVIII.\n  Blindness, XIX.\n  Boasting, 141, 307.\n  Boredom, 141, 304, 352. SEE Ennui.\n  Bouts rimes, 382, CXX.\n  Bravery, 1, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221, 365,\n  504. SEE Courage and Valour.\n  Brilliancy of Mind, R.II.\n  Brilliant things, LII.\n\n\n\n  Capacity, 375.\n  Caprice, 45.\n  Chance, 57, 344, XCV. SEE Fortune.\n  Character, LVI, R.II.\n  Chastity, 1. SEE Virtue of Women.\n  Cheating, 114, 127.\n  Circumstances, 59, 470.\n  Civility, 260.\n  Clemency, 15, 16.\n  Cleverness, 162, 269, 245, 399.\n  Coarseness, 372.\n  Comedy, 211, R.III.\n  Compassion, 463. SEE Pity.\n  Complaisance, 481, R.IV.\n  Conduct, 163, 227, 378, CXVII.\n  Confidants, whom we make, R.I.\n  Confidence, 239, 365, 475, XLIX, R.1, R.IV.\n  Confidence, difference from Sincerity\n  ----------, defined, R.I.\n  Consolation, 325.\n  Constancy, 19, 20, 21, 175, 176, 420.\n  Contempt, 322.\n  -------- of Death, 504.\n  Contentment, LXXX.\n  Contradictions, 478.\n  Conversation, 139, 140, 142, 312, 313, 314, 364, 391,\n  421, CIV, R.V.\n  Copies, 133.\n  Coquetry, 241. SEE Flirtation.\n  Country Manner, 393.\n  ------ Accent, 342.\n  Courage, 1, 214, 215, 216, 219, 221, XLII. SEE Bravery.\n  Covetousness, opposed to Reason, 469\n  Cowardice, 215, 480.\n  Cowards, 370.\n  Crimes, 183, 465, XXXV, XXXVII.\n  Cunning, 126, 129, 394, 407.\n  Curiosity, 173.\n\n\n\n  Danger, XLII.\n  Death, 21, 23, 26.\n  ----, Contempt of, 504.\n  Deceit, 86, 117, 118, 124, 127, 129, 395, 434. SEE ALSO\n  Self-Deceit.\n  Deception, CXXI.\n  Decency, 447.\n  Defects, 31, 90, 493, LXXII. SEE Faults.\n  Delicacy, 128, R.II.\n  Dependency, result of Confidence, R.I.\n  Designs, 160, 161.\n  Desires, 439, 469, LXXXII, LXXXV.\n  Despicable Persons, 322.\n  Detail, Mind given to, R.II.\n  Details, 41, 106.\n  Devotion, 427.\n  Devotees, 427.\n  Devout, LXXVI.\n  Differences, 135.\n  Dignities, R.VII.\n  Discretion, R.V.\n  Disguise, 119, 246, 282.\n  Disgrace, 235, 412.\n  Dishonour, 326, LXIX.\n  Distrust, 84, 86, 335.\n  Divination, 425.\n  Doubt, 348.\n  Docility, R.IV.\n  Dupes, 87, 102.\n\n\n\n  Education, 261.\n  Elevation, 399, 400, 403.\n  Eloquence, 8, 249, 250.\n  Employments, 164, 419, 449.\n  Enemies, 114, 397, 458, 463.\n  Ennui, 122, 141, 304, 312, 352, CXII, R.II.\n  Envy, 27, 28, 280, 281, 328, 376, 433, 476, 486.\n  Epithets assigned to the Mind, R.II.\n  Esteem, 296.\n  Establish, 56, 280.\n  Evils, 121, 197, 269, 454, 464, XCIII.\n  Example, 230.\n  Exchange of secrets, R.I.\n  Experience, 405.\n  Expedients, 287.\n  Expression, refined, R.V.\n\n\n\n  Faculties of the Mind, 174.\n  Failings, 397, 403.\n  Falseness, R.VI.\n  --------, disguised, 282.\n  --------, kinds of, R.VI.\n  Familiarity, R.IV.\n  Fame, 157.\n  Farces, men compared to, 211.\n  Faults, 37, 112, 155, 184, 190, 194, 196, 251, 354, 365,\n  372, 397, 403, 411, 428, 493, 494, V, LXV, CX,\n  CXV.\n  Favourites, 55.\n  Fear, 370, LXVIII.\n  Feeling, 255.\n  Ferocity, XXXIII.\n  Fickleness, 179, 181, 498.\n  Fidelity, 247.\n  --------, hardest test of, R.I.\n  -------- in love, 331, 381, C.\n  Figure and air, R.VII.\n  Firmness, 19, 479.\n  Flattery, 123, 144, 152, 198, 320, 329.\n  Flirts, 406, 418.\n  Flirtation, 107, 241, 277, 332, 334, 349, 376, LXIV.\n  Follies, 156, 300, 408, 416.\n  Folly, 207, 208, 209, 210, 231, 300, 310, 311, 318,\n  XXIV.\n  Fools, 140, 210, 309, 318, 357, 414, 451, 456,\n  ----, old, 444.\n  ----, witty, 451, 456.\n  Force of Mind, 30, 42, 237.\n  Forgetfulness, XXVI.\n  Forgiveness, 330.\n  Fortitude, 19. SEE Bravery.\n  Fortune, 1, 17, 45, 52, 53, 58, 60, 61, 154, 212, 227, 323,\n  343, 380, 391, 392, 399, 403, 435, 449, IX., CXIX.\n  Friends, 84, 114, 179, 235, 279, 315, 319, 428.\n  ------, adversity of, XV.\n  ------, disgrace of, 235.\n  ------, faults of, 428.\n  ------, true ones, LXXXVI.\n  Friendship, 80, 81, 83, 376, 410, 427, 440, 441, 473,\n  XXII, CXXIV.\n  ----------, defined, 83.\n  ----------, women do not care for, 440.\n  ----------, rarer than love, 473.\n  Funerals, XXXVIII.\n\n\n\n  Gallantry, 100. SEE Flirtation.\n  -------- of mind, 100.\n  Generosity, 246.\n  Genius, R.II.\n  Gentleness, R.VI.\n  Ghosts, 76.\n  Gifts of the mind, R.II.\n  Glory, 157, 198, 221, 268.\n  Good, 121, 185, 229, 238, 303, XCIII.\n  ----, how to be, XLVII.\n  Goodness, 237, 275, 284, XLVI.\n  Good grace, 67, R.VII.\n  Good man, who is a, 206.\n  God nature, 481.\n  Good qualities, 29, 90, 337, 365, 397, 462.\n  Good sense, 67, 347, CVI.\n  Good taste, 258.\n  ----------, rarity of, R.III.\n  ----, women, 368, XCVI.\n  Government of others, 151.\n  Grace, 67.\n  Gracefulness, 240.\n  Gratitude, 223, 224, 225, 279, 298, 438, XLIII.\n  Gravity, 257.\n  Great men, what they cannot acquire, LXXXIV.\n  Great minds, 142.\n  Great names, 94.\n  Greediness, 66.\n\n\n\n  Habit, 426.\n  Happy, who are, 49.\n  Happiness, 48, 61, VII, LXXX, LXXXI.\n  hatred, 338.\n  Head, 102, 108.\n  Health, 188, LVII.\n  Heart, 98, 102, 103, 108, 478, 484.\n  Heroes, 24, 53, 185.\n  Honesty, 202, 206.\n  Honour, 270.\n  Hope, 168, LXVIII.\n  Humility, 254, 358, LXXVI, LXXIX\n  Humiliation, 272.\n  Humour, 47. SEE Temper.\n  Hypocrisy, 218.\n  -------- of afflictions, 233.\n\n\n\n  Idleness, 169, 266, 267, 398, 482, 487, XVIII., LV.\n  Ills, 174. SEE Evils.\n  Illusions, 123.\n  Imagination, 478.\n  Imitation, 230, XLIV, R.V.\n  Impertinence, 502.\n  Impossibilities, 30.\n  Incapacity, 126.\n  Inclination, 253, 390.\n  Inconsistency, 135.\n  Inconstancy, 181.\n  Inconvenience, 242.\n  Indifference, 172, XXIII.\n  Indiscretion, 429.\n  Indolence. SEE Idleness, and Laziness.\n  Infidelity, 359, 360, 381, 429.\n  Ingratitude, 96, 226, 306, 317.\n  Injuries, 14.\n  Injustice, 78.\n  Innocence, 465.\n  Instinct, 123.\n  Integrity, 170.\n  Interest, 39, 40, 66, 85, 172, 187, 232, 253, 305, 390.\n  Interests, 66.\n  Intrepidity, 217, XL.\n  Intrigue, 73.\n  Invention, 287.\n\n\n\n  Jealousy, 28, 32, 324, 336, 359, 361, 446, 503, CII.\n  Joy, XIV.\n  Judges, 268.\n  Judgment, 89, 97, 248.\n  -------- of the World, 212, 455.\n  Justice, 78, 458, XII.\n\n\n\n  Kindness, 14, 85.\n  Knowledge, 106.\n\n\n\n  Labour of Body, effect of, LXXVII.\n  Laments, 355.\n  Laziness, 367. SEE Idleness.\n  Leader, 43.\n  Levity, 179, 181.\n  Liberality, 167, 263.\n  Liberty in Society, R.IV.\n  Limits to Confidence, R.I.\n  Little Minds, 142.\n  Love, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 136, 259, 262,\n  274, 286, 296, 321, 335, 336, 348, 349, 351, 353,\n  361, 371, 374, 385, 395, 396, 402, 417, 418, 422,\n  430, 440, 441, 459, 466, 471, 473, 499, 500, 501,\n  X, XI, XIII, LVIII, LX, LXII, LXXXVIII,\n  XCIX,  CIII, CXXI.\n  ---- defined, 68.\n  ----, Coldness in, LX.\n  ----, Effect of absence on, 276.\n  ---- akin to Hate, 111.\n  ---- of Women, 466, 471, 499.\n  ----, Novelty in, 274.\n  ----, Infidelity in, LXIV.\n  ----, Old age of, 430.\n  ----, Cure for, 417, 459.\n  Loss of Friends, XLV.\n  Lovers, 312, 362, LXXXVII, XCVII.\n  Lunatic, 353.\n  Luxury, LIV.\n  Lying, 63.\n\n\n\n  Madmen, 353, 414.\n  Malady, LVII.\n  Magistrates, R.VI.\n  Magnanimity, 248, LIII.\n  ---------- defined, 285.\n  Malice, 483.\n  Manners, R.VII.\n  Mankind, 436, XXXVI.\n  Marriages, 113.\n  Maxims, LXVII.\n  Mediocrity, 375.\n  Memory, 89, 313.\n  Men easier to know than Man, 436.\n  Merit, 50, 92, 95, 153, 156, 165, 166, 273, 291, 379,\n  401, 437, 455, CXVIII.\n  Mind, 101, 103, 265, 357, 448, 482, CIX.\n  Mind, Capacities of, R.II.\n  Miserable, 49.\n  Misfortunes, 19, 24, 174, 325.\n  ---------- of Friends. XV.\n  ---------- of Enemies, 463.\n  Mistaken people, 386.\n  Mistrust, 86.\n  Mockery, R.II.\n  Moderation, 17, 18, 293, 308, III, IV.\n  Money, Man compared to, XXXII.\n  Motives, 409.\n\n\n\n  Names, Great, 94.\n  Natural goodness, 275.\n  Natural, to be, 431.\n  ------, always pleasing, R.VII.\n  Nature, 53, 153, 189, 365, 404.\n  Negotiations, 278.\n  Novelty in study, 178.\n  ------ in love, 274.\n  ------ in friendship, 426.\n\n\n\n  Obligations, 299, 317, 438. SEE Benefits and Gratitude.\n  Obstinacy, 234, 424.\n  -------- its cause, 265.\n  Occasions. SEE Opportunities.\n  Old Age, 109, 210, 418, 423, 430, 461.\n  Old Men, 93.\n  Openness of heart, R.1.\n  Opinions, 13, 234, CXXIII, R.V.\n  Opinionatedness, R.V.\n  Opportunities, 345, 453, CV.\n\n\n\n  Passions, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 122, 188, 266, 276, 404,\n  422, 443, 460, 471, 477, 484, 485, 486, 500, II.\n  Peace of Mind, VIII.\n  Penetration, 377, 425, CXVI.\n  Perfection, R.II.\n  Perseverance, 177.\n  Perspective, 104.\n  Persuasion, 8.\n  Philosophers, 46, 54, 504, XXI.\n  Philosophy, 22.\n  ---------- of a Footman, 504, LXXV.\n  Pity, 264.\n  Pleasing, 413, CXXV.\n  --------, Mode of, XLVIII, R.V.\n  --------, Mind a, R.II.\n  Point of view, R.IV.\n  Politeness, 372, R.V.\n  Politeness of Mind, 99.\n  Praise, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 272, 356,\n  432, XXVII, CVII.\n  Preoccupation, 92, R.III.\n  Pride, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 228, 234, 239, 254, 267, 281,\n  450, 462, 463, 472, VI, XIX.\n  Princes, 15, 320.\n  Proceedings, 170.\n  Productions of the Mind, R.II.\n  Professions, 256.\n  Promises, 38.\n  Proportion, R.VI.\n  Propriety, 447.\n  -------- in Women, XXXIV.\n  Prosperity, 25.\n  Providence, XXXIX.\n  Prudence, 65, LXXXVIII, R.I.\n\n\n\n  Qualities, 29, 162, 397, 470, 498, R.VI, R.VII.\n  --------, Bad, 468.\n  --------, Good, 88, 337, 462.\n  --------, Great, 159, 433.\n  --------, of Mind, classified, R.II.\n  Quarrels, 496,\n  Quoting oneself, R.V.\n\n\n\n  Raillery, R.II, R.IV.\n  Rank, 401.\n  Reason, 42, 105, 325, 365, 467, 469, XX, R.VI.\n  Recollection in Memory{, 313}.\n  Reconciliation, 82.\n  Refinement, R.II.\n  Regret, 355.\n  Relapses, 193.\n  Remedies, 288.\n  -------- for love 459.\n  Remonstrances, 37.\n  Repentance, 180.\n  Repose, 268.\n  Reproaches, 148.\n  Reputation, 268, 412.\n  Resolution, L.\n  Revenge, 14.\n  Riches, 54.\n  Ridicule, 133, 134, 326, 418, 422.\n  Rules for Conversation, R.V.\n  Rusticity, 393.\n\n\n\n  Satire, 483, R.II, R.IV.\n  Sciences, R.VI.\n  Secrets, XVI, R.I.\n  ------, How they should be kept, R.I.\n  Self-deceit, 115, 452.\n  Self-love, 2, 3, 4, 228, 236, 247, 261, 262, 339, 494, 500,\n  I, XVII, XXVIII, XXXIII, LXVI, LXXIV.\n  -------- in love, 262.\n  Self-satisfaction, 51.\n  Sensibility, 275.\n  Sensible People, 347, CVI.\n  Sentiment, 255, R.VI.\n  Severity of Women, 204, 333.\n  Shame, 213, 220.\n  Silence, 79, 137, 138, CXIV.\n  Silliness. SEE Folly.\n  Simplicity, 289.\n  Sincerity, 62, 316, 366, 383, 457.\n  --------, Difference between it and Confidence, R.I.\n  --------, defined, R.I.\n  -------- of Lovers, LXI.\n  Skill, LXIV.\n  Sobriety, XXV.\n  Society, 87, 201, R.IV.\n  ------, Distinction between it and Friendship, R.IV.\n  Soul, 80, 188, 194.\n  Souls, Great, XXXI.\n  Sorrows, LXXVIII.\n  Stages of Life, 405.\n  Strength of mind, 19, 20, 21, 504.\n  Studies, why new ones are pleasing, 178.\n  ------, what to study, XCII.\n  Subtilty, 128.\n  Sun, 26.\n\n\n\n  Talents, 468.\n  ------, latent, 344, XCV.\n  Talkativeness, 314.\n  Taste, 13, 109, 252, 390, 467, CXX, R.III, R.VI.\n  ----, good, 258, R.III.\n  ----, cause of diversities in, R.III.\n  ----, false, R.III.\n  Tears, 233, 373.\n  Temper, 47, 290, 292.\n  Temperament, 220, 222, 297, 346.\n  Times for speaking, R.V.\n  Timidity, 169, 480.\n  Titles, XXXII.\n  Tranquillity, 488.\n  Treachery, 120, 126.\n  Treason, 120.\n  Trickery, 86, 350, XCI. SEE Deceit.\n  Trifles, 41.\n  Truth, 64, LI.\n  Tyranny, R.I.\n\n\n\n  Understanding, 89.\n  Untruth, 63. SEE Lying.\n  Unhappy, CXXV.\n\n\n\n  Valour, 1, 213, 214, 215, 216. SEE Bravery and Courage.\n  Vanity, 137, 158, 200, 232, 388, 389, 443, 467, 483.\n  Variety of mind, R.IV.\n  Vice, 182, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 195, 218, 253, 273,\n  380, 442, 445, XXIX.\n  Violence, 363, 369, 466, CXIII.\n  Victory, XII.\n  Virtue, 1, 25, 169, 171, 182, 186, 187, 189, 200, 218,\n  253, 380, 388, 442, 445, 489, XXIX.\n  Virtue of Women, 1, 220, 367, XCVIII.\n  Vivacity, 416.\n\n\n\n  Weakness, 130, 445.\n  Wealth, Contempt of, 301.\n  Weariness. SEE Ennui.\n  Wicked people, 284.\n  Wife jealous sometimes desirable, LXXXIX.\n  Will, 30.\n  Wisdom, 132, 210, 231, 323, 444, LXXXIII.\n  Wise Man, who is a, 203, XCI.\n  Wishes, 295.\n  Wit, 199, 340, 413, 415, 421, 502.\n  Wives, 364, CIV.\n  Woman, 131, 204, 205, 220, 241, 277, 332, 333, 334,\n  340, 346, 362, 367, 368, 418, 429, 440, 466, 471,\n  474, LXX, XC.\n  Women, Severity of, 333.\n  ----, Virtue of, 205, 220, XC.\n  ----, Power of, LXXI.\n  Wonder, 384.\n  World, 201.\n  ----, Judgment of, 268.\n  ----, Approbation of, 201.\n  ----, Establishment in, 56.\n  ----, Praise and censure of, 454.\n\n\n\n  Young men, 378, 495.\n  Youth, 271, 341.","title":"Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":35401}