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Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

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Title: Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Author: Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL MAXIMS ***

{Transcriber's notes: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour

instead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); words that

were italicized appear in all CAPITALS; the translators' comments are

in square brackets [...] as they are in the text; footnotes are indicated

by * and appear in angled brackets <...> immediately following the passage

ads:

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containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of the page);

and, finally, I give corrections and addenda in curly brackets {...}.}

Rochefoucauld

"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew

From Nature--I believe them true.

They argue no corrupted mind

In him; the fault is in mankind."--Swift.

"Les Maximes de la Rochefoucauld sont des proverbs des

gens d'esprit."--Montesquieu.

"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations."--Sir J.

Mackintosh.

"Translators should not work alone; for good ET PROPRIA VERBA

do not always occur to one mind."--Luther's TABLE TALK, iii.

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld,

Prince de Marsillac.

Translated from the Editions of 1678 and 1827 with introduction,

notes, and some account of the author and his times.

J. W. Willis Bund, M.A. LL.B

and

J. Hain Friswell

Simpson Low, Son, and Marston,

188, Fleet Street.

1871.

{Translators'} Preface.

Some apology must be made for an attempt

"to translate the untranslatable." Not-

withstanding there are no less than eight

English translations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly

any are readable, none are free from faults, and all

fail more or less to convey the author's meaning.

Though so often translated, there is not a complete

English edition of the Maxims and Reflections. All

the translations are confined exclusively to the

Maxims, none include the Reflections. This may be

ads:

accounted for, from the fact that most of the trans-

lations are taken from the old editions of the

Maxims, in which the Reflections do not appear.

Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text

of Rochefoucauld, the various editions were but

reprints of the preceding ones, without any regard

to the alterations made by the author in the later

editions published during his life-time. So much

was this the case, that Maxims which had been

rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last edition, were

still retained in the body of the work. To give

but one example, the celebrated Maxim as to the

misfortunes of our friends, was omitted in the last

edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's

life-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim

appears in the body of the work.

M. Aime Martin in 1827 published an edition

of the Maxims and Reflections which has ever since

been the standard text of Rochefoucauld in France.

The Maxims are printed from the edition of 1678,

the last published during the author's life, and the

last which received his corrections. To this edition

were added two Supplements; the first containing

the Maxims which had appeared in the editions of

1665, 1666, and 1675, and which were afterwards

omitted; the second, some additional Maxims

found among various of the author's manuscripts

in the Royal Library at Paris. And a Series of Re-

flections which had been previously published in a

work called "Receuil de pieces d'histoire et de litte-

rature." Paris, 1731. They were first published

with the Maxims in an edition by Gabriel Brotier.

In an edition of Rochefoucauld entitled "Reflex-

ions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales, augmentees

de plus deux cent nouvelles Maximes et Maximes

et Pensees diverses suivant les copies Imprimees a

Paris, chez Claude Barbin, et Matre Cramoisy

1692,"* some fifty Maxims were added, ascribed

by the editor to Rochefoucauld, and as his family

allowed them to be published under his name, it

seems probable they were genuine. These fifty

form the third supplement to this book.

*<In all the French editions this book is spoken of as

published in 1693. The only copy I have seen is in the

Cambridge University Library, 47, 16, 81, and is called

"Reflexions Morales.">

The apology for the present edition of Rochefou-

cauld must therefore be twofold: firstly, that it is

an attempt to give the public a complete English

edition of Rochefoucauld's works as a moralist.

The body of the work comprises the Maxims

as the author finally left them, the first supple-

ment, those published in former editions, and

rejected by the author in the later; the second, the

unpublished Maxims taken from the author's cor-

respondence and manuscripts, and the third, the

Maxims first published in 1692. While the Re-

flections, in which the thoughts in the Maxims are

extended and elaborated, now appear in English

for the first time. And secondly, that it is an

attempt (to quote the preface of the edition of

1749) "to do the Duc de la Rochefoucauld the

justice to make him speak English."

{Translators'} Introduction

The description of the "ancien regime" in

France, "a despotism tempered by epigrams,"

like most epigrammatic sentences, contains

some truth, with much fiction. The society of

the last half of the seventeenth, and the whole of the

eighteenth centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced

by the precise and terse mode in which the popular

writers of that date expressed their thoughts. To a

people naturally inclined to think that every possible

view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is

included in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word

"voila," truths expressed in condensed sentences must

always have a peculiar charm. It is, perhaps, from this

love of epigram, that we find so many eminent

French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La

Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Montesquieu, and Vau-

venargues, each contributed to the rich stock of French

epigrams. No other country can show such a list

of brilliant writers--in England certainly we can-

not. Our most celebrated, Lord Bacon, has, by

his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their

fame is, to a great measure, obscured. The only

Englishman who could have rivalled La Rochefou-

cauld or La Bruyere was the Earl of Chesterfield, and

he only could have done so from his very inti-

mate connexion with France; but unfortunately his

brilliant genius was spent in the impossible task of

trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in "cutting

blocks with a razor."

Of all the French epigrammatic writers La Rochefou-

cauld is at once the most widely known, and the most

distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion on the cen-

tury of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight,

says, "One of the works that most largely contributed

to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit

of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims,

by Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld."

This Francois, the second Duc de la Rochefoucauld,

Prince de Marsillac, the author of the maxims, was

one of the most illustrious members of the most illus-

trious families among the French noblesse. Descended

from the ancient Dukes of Guienne, the founder of

the Family Fulk or Foucauld, a younger branch of

the House of Lusignan, was at the commencement of

the eleventh century the Seigneur of a small town,

La Roche, in the Angounois. Our chief knowledge of

this feudal lord is drawn from the monkish chronicles.

As the benefactor of the various abbeys and monas-

teries in his province, he is naturally spoken of by

them in terms of eulogy, and in the charter of one of

the abbeys of Angouleme he is called, "vir nobilissimus

Fulcaldus." His territorial power enabled him to

adopt what was then, as is still in Scotland, a com-

mon custom, to prefix the name of his estate to his

surname, and thus to create and transmit to his

descendants the illustrious surname of La Rochefou-

cauld.

From that time until that great crisis in the history

of the French aristocracy, the Revolution of 1789, the

family of La Rochefoucauld have been, "if not first, in

the very first line" of that most illustrious body. One

Seigneur served under Philip Augustus against Richard

Coeur de Lion, and was made prisoner at the battle

of Gisors. The eighth Seigneur Guy performed a great

tilt at Bordeaux, attended (according to Froissart) to

the Lists by some two hundred of his kindred and

relations. The sixteenth Seigneur Francais was cham-

berlain to Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and stood

at the font as sponsor, giving his name to that last

light of French chivalry, Francis I. In 1515 he was

created a baron, and was afterwards advanced to a

count, on account of his great service to Francis and

his predecessors.

The second count pushed the family fortune still

further by obtaining a patent as the Prince de Mar-

sillac. His widow, Anne de Polignac, entertained

Charles V. at the family chateau at Verteuil, in so

princely a manner that on leaving Charles observed,

"He had never entered a house so redolent of high

virtue, uprightness, and lordliness as that mansion."

The third count, after serving with distinction

under the Duke of Guise against the Spaniards, was

made prisoner at St. Quintin, and only regained his

liberty to fall a victim to the "bloody infamy" of St.

Bartholomew. His son, the fourth count, saved with

difficulty from that massacre, after serving with dis-

tinction in the religious wars, was taken prisoner

in a skirmish at St. Yriex la Perche, and murdered

by the Leaguers in cold blood.

The fifth count, one of the ministers of Louis

XIII., after fighting against the English and Buck-

ingham at the Ile de Re, was created a duke. His

son Francis, the second duke, by his writings has

made the family name a household word.

The third duke fought in many of the earlier cam-

paigns of Louis XIV. at Torcy, Lille, Cambray, and

was dangerously wounded at the passage of the Rhine.

From his bravery he rose to high favour at Court, and

was appointed Master of the Horse (Grand Veneur)

and Lord Chamberlain. His son, the fourth duke,

commanded the regiment of Navarre, and took part

in storming the village of Neerwinden on the day

when William III. was defeated at Landen. He was

afterwards created Duc de la Rochequyon and Marquis

de Liancourt.

The fifth duke, banished from Court by Louis XV.,

became the friend of the philosopher Voltaire.

The sixth duke, the friend of Condorcet, was the

last of the long line of noble lords who bore that

distinguished name. In those terrible days of Sep-

tember, 1792, when the French people were proclaim-

ing universal humanity, the duke was seized as an

aristocrat by the mob at Gisors and put to death

behind his own carriage, in which sat his mother and

his wife, at the very place where, some six centuries

previously, his ancestor had been taken prisoner in

a fair fight. A modern writer has spoken of this

murder "as an admirable reprisal upon the grandson

for the writings and conduct of the grandfather."

But M. Sainte Beuve observes as to this, he can see

nothing admirable in the death of the duke, and if it

proves anything, it is only that the grandfather was

not so wrong in his judgment of men as is usually

supposed.

Francis, the author, was born on the 15th December

1615. M. Sainte Beuve divides his life into four

periods, first, from his birth till he was thirty-five, when

he became mixed up in the war of the Fronde; the

second period, during the progress of that war; the

third, the twelve years that followed, while he re-

covered from his wounds, and wrote his maxims dur-

ing his retirement from society; and the last from

that time till his death.

In the same way that Herodotus calls each book of

his history by the name of one of the muses, so each

of these four periods of La Rochefoucauld's life may

be associated with the name of a woman who was for

the time his ruling passion. These four ladies are the

Duchesse de Chevreuse, the Duchesse de Longueville,

Madame de Sable, and Madame de La Fayette.

La Rochefoucauld's early education was neglected;

his father, occupied in the affairs of state, either had

not, or did not devote any time to his education. His

natural talents and his habits of observation soon,

however, supplied all deficiencies. By birth and sta-

tion placed in the best society of the French Court,

he soon became a most finished courtier. Knowing

how precarious Court favour then was, his father,

when young Rochefoucauld was only nine years old,

sent him into the army. He was subsequently at-

tached to the regiment of Auvergne. Though but

sixteen he was present, and took part in the mili-

tary operations at the siege of Cassel. The Court of

Louis XIII. was then ruled imperiously by Richelieu.

The Duke de la Rochefoucauld was strongly opposed

to the Cardinal's party. By joining in the plots of

Gaston of Orleans, he gave Richelieu an opportunity

of ridding Paris of his opposition. When those plots

were discovered, the Duke was sent into a sort of

banishment to Blois. His son, who was then at

Court with him, was, upon the pretext of a liaison

with Mdlle. d'Hautefort, one of the ladies in waiting

on the Queen (Anne of Austria), but in reality to pre-

vent the Duke learning what was passing at Paris, sent

with his father. The result of the exile was Roche-

foucauld's marriage. With the exception that his

wife's name was Mdlle. Vivonne, and that she was

the mother of five sons and three daughters, nothing

is known of her. While Rochefoucauld and his

father were at Blois, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, one

of the beauties of the Court, and the mistress of

Louis, was banished to Tours. She and Rochefou-

cauld met, and soon became intimate, and for a time

she was destined to be the one motive of his actions.

The Duchesse was engaged in a correspondence with

the Court of Spain and the Queen. Into this plot

Rochefoucauld threw himself with all his energy; his

connexion with the Queen brought him back to his

old love Mdlle. d'Hautefort, and led him to her

party, which he afterwards followed. The course he

took shut him off from all chance of Court favour.

The King regarded him with coldness, the Cardinal

with irritation. Although the Bastile and the scaffold,

the fate of Chalais and Montmorency, were before his

eyes, they failed to deter him from plotting. He was

about twenty-three; returning to Paris, he warmly

sided with the Queen. He says in his Memoirs

that the only persons she could then trust were him-

self and Mdlle. d'Hautefort, and it was proposed he

should take both of them from Paris to Brussels. Into

this plan he entered with all his youthful indiscretion,

it being for several reasons the very one he would wish

to adopt, as it would strengthen his influence with

Anne of Austria, place Richelieu and his master in an

uncomfortable position, and save Mdlle. d'Hautefort

from the attentions the King was showing her.

But Richelieu of course discovered this plot, and

Rochefoucauld was, of course, sent to the Bastile.

He was liberated after a week's imprisonment, but

banished to his chateau at Verteuil.

The reason for this clemency was that the Cardinal

desired to win Rochefoucauld from the Queen's party.

A command in the army was offered to him, but by

the Queen's orders refused.

For some three years Rochefoucauld remained at

Verteuil, waiting the time for his reckoning with

Richelieu; speculating on the King's death, and the

favours he would then receive from the Queen. During

this period he was more or less engaged in plotting

against his enemy the Cardinal, and hatching treason

with Cinq Mars and De Thou.

M. Sainte Beuve says, that unless we study this first

part of Rochefoucauld's life, we shall never under-

stand his maxims. The bitter disappointment of the

passionate love, the high hopes then formed, the deceit

and treachery then witnessed, furnished the real key to

their meaning. The cutting cynicism of the morality

was built on the ruins of that chivalrous ambition and

romantic affection. He saw his friend Cinq Mars

sent to the scaffold, himself betrayed by men whom

he had trusted, and the only reason he could assign

for these actions was intense selfishness.

Meanwhile, Richelieu died. Rochefoucauld re-

turned to Court, and found Anne of Austria regent,

and Mazarin minister. The Queen's former friends

flocked there in numbers, expecting that now their

time of prosperity had come. They were bitterly dis-

appointed. Mazarin relied on hope instead of grati-

tude, to keep the Queen's adherents on his side. The

most that any received were promises that were never

performed. In after years, doubtless, Rochefoucauld's

recollection of his disappointment led him to write the

maxim: "We promise according to our hopes, we per-

form according to our fears." But he was not even to

receive promises; he asked for the Governorship of

Havre, which was then vacant. He was flatly refused.

Disappointment gave rise to anger, and uniting with

his old flame, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who had

received the same treatment, and with the Duke of

Beaufort, they formed a conspiracy against the govern-

ment. The plot was, of course, discovered and crushed.

Beaufort was arrested, the Duchesse banished. Irri-

tated and disgusted, Rochefoucauld went with the

Duc d'Enghein, who was then joining the army, on a

campaign, and here he found the one love of his life,

the Duke's sister, Mdme. de Longueville. This lady,

young, beautiful, and accomplished, obtained a great

ascendancy over Rochefoucauld, and was the cause of

his taking the side of Conde in the subsequent civil

war. Rochefoucauld did not stay long with the army.

He was badly wounded at the siege of Mardik, and

returned from thence to Paris. On recovering from

his wounds, the war of the Fronde broke out. This

war is said to have been most ridiculous, as being

carried on without a definite object, a plan, or a

leader. But this description is hardly correct; it was

the struggle of the French nobility against the rule

of the Court; an attempt, the final attempt, to re-

cover their lost influence over the state, and to save

themselves from sinking under the rule of cardinals

and priests.

With the general history of that war we have

nothing to do; it is far too complicated and too

confused to be stated here. The memoirs of Roche-

foucauld and De Retz will give the details to those

who desire to trace the contests of the factions--the

course of the intrigues. We may confine ourselves to

its progress so far as it relates to the Duc de la Roche-

foucauld.

On the Cardinal causing the Princes de Conde

and Conti, and the Duc de Longueville, to be

arrested, Rochefoucauld and the Duchess fled into

Normandy. Leaving her at Dieppe, he went into

Poitou, of which province he had some years pre-

viously bought the post of governor. He was there

joined by the Duc de Bouillon, and he and the Duke

marched to, and occupied Bordeaux. Cardinal Ma-

zarin and Marechal de la Meilleraie advanced in force

on Bordeaux, and attacked the town. A bloody

battle followed. Rochefoucauld defended the town

with the greatest bravery, and repulsed the Cardinal.

Notwithstanding the repulse, the burghers of Bor-

deaux were anxious to make peace, and save the city

from destruction. The Parliament of Bordeaux com-

pelled Rochefoucauld to surrender. He did so, and

returned nominally to Poitou, but in reality in secret

to Paris.

There he found the Queen engaged in trying to

maintain her position by playing off the rival parties

of the Prince Conde and the Cardinal De Retz against

each other. Rochefoucauld eagerly espoused his old

party--that of Conde. In August, 1651, the contend-

ing parties met in the Hall of the Parliament of Paris,

and it was with great difficulty they were prevented

from coming to blows even there. It is even said that

Rochefoucauld had ordered his followers to murder

De Retz.

Rochefoucauld was soon to undergo a bitter disap-

pointment. While occupied with party strife and

faction in Paris, Madame de Chevreuse left him,

and formed an alliance with the Duc de Nemours.

Rochefoucauld still loved her. It was, probably,

thinking of this that he afterwards wrote, "Jealousy is

born with love, but does not die with it." He endea-

voured to get Madame de Chatillon, the old mistress

of the Duc de Nemours, reinstated in favour, but in

this he did not succeed. The Duc de Nemours was

soon after killed in a duel. The war went on, and

after several indecisive skirmishes, the decisive battle

was fought at Paris, in the Faubourg St. Antoine,

where the Parisians first learnt the use or the abuse

of their favourite defence, the barricade. In this

battle, Rochefoucauld behaved with great bravery.

He was wounded in the head, a wound which for a

time deprived him of his sight. Before he recovered,

the war was over, Louis XIV. had attained his ma-

jority, the gold of Mazarin, the arms of Turenne, had

been successful, the French nobility were vanquished,

the court supremacy established.

This completed Rochefoucauld's active life.

When he recovered his health, he devoted himself

to society. Madame de Sable assumed a hold over

him. He lived a quiet life, and occupied himself in

composing an account of his early life, called his

"Memoirs," and his immortal "Maxims."

From the time he ceased to take part in public life,

Rochefoucauld's real glory began. Having acted the

various parts of soldier, politician, and lover with but

small success, he now commenced the part of moralist,

by which he is known to the world.

Living in the most brilliant society that France

possessed, famous from his writings, distinguished

from the part he had taken in public affairs, he

formed the centre of one of those remarkable French

literary societies, a society which numbered among its

members La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau. Among his

most attached friends was Madame de La Fayette (the

authoress of the "Princess of Cleeves"), and this friend-

ship continued until his death. He was not, however,

destined to pass away in that gay society without

some troubles. At the passage of the Rhine in 1672

two of his sons were engaged; the one was killed,

the other severely wounded. Rochefoucauld was

much affected by this, but perhaps still more by the

death of the young Duc de Longueville, who perished

on the same occasion.

Sainte Beuve says that the cynical book and that

young life were the only fruits of the war of the

Fronde. Madame de Sevigne, who was with him

when he heard the news of the death of so much that

was dear to him, says, "I saw his heart laid bare on that

cruel occasion, and his courage, his merit, his tender-

ness, and good sense surpassed all I ever met with. I

hold his wit and accomplishments as nothing in com-

parison." The combined effect of his wounds and the

gout caused the last years of Rochefoucauld's life to

be spent in great pain. Madame de Sevigne, who

was {with} him continually during his last illness, speaks of

the fortitude with which he bore his sufferings as

something to be admired. Writing to her daughter,

she says, "Believe me, it is not for nothing he has

moralised all his life; he has thought so often on his

last moments that they are nothing new or unfamiliar

to him."

In his last illness, the great moralist was attended

by the great divine, Bossuet. Whether that match-

less eloquence or his own philosophic calm had,

in spite of his writings, brought him into the state

Madame de Sevigne describes, we know not; but

one, or both, contributed to his passing away in a

manner that did not disgrace a French noble or a

French philosopher. On the 11th March, 1680, he

ended his stormy life in peace after so much strife, a

loyal subject after so much treason.

One of his friends, Madame Deshoulieres, shortly

before he died sent him an ode on death, which

aptly describes his state--

"Oui, soyez alors plus ferme,

Que ces vulgaires humains

Qui, pres de leur dernier terme,

De vaines terreurs sont pleins.

En sage que rien n'offense,

Livrez-vous sans resistance

A d'inevitables traits;

Et, d'une demarche egale,

Passez cette onde fatal

Qu'on ne repasse jamais."

Rochefoucauld left behind him only two works, the

one, Memoirs of his own time, the other the Maxims.

The first described the scenes in which his youth had

been spent, and though written in a lively style,

and giving faithful pictures of the intrigues and the

scandals of the court during Louis XIV.'s minority,

yet, except to the historian, has ceased at the present

day to be of much interest. It forms, perhaps, the

true key to understand the special as opposed to

general application of the maxims.

Notwithstanding the assertion of Bayle, that "there

are few people so bigoted to antiquity as not to prefer

the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld to the Commen-

taries of Caesar," or the statement of Voltaire, "that

the Memoirs are universally read and the Maxims are

learnt by heart," few persons at the present day ever

heard of the Memoirs, and the knowledge of most as

to the Maxims is confined to that most celebrated of

all, though omitted from his last edition, "There

is something in the misfortunes of our best friends

which does not wholly displease us." Yet it is

difficult to assign a cause for this; no book is

perhaps oftener unwittingly quoted, none certainly

oftener unblushingly pillaged; upon none have so

many contradictory opinions been given.

"Few books," says Mr. Hallam, "have been more

highly extolled, or more severely blamed, than the

maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld, and that not

only here, but also in France." Rousseau speaks of it

as, "a sad and melancholy book," though he goes on

to say "it is usually so in youth when we do not like

seeing man as he is." Voltaire says of it, in the words

above quoted, "One of the works which most contri-

buted to form the taste of the (French) nation, and

to give it a spirit of justness and precision, was the

collection of the maxims of Francois Duc de la Roche-

foucauld, though there is scarcely more than one

truth running through the book--that 'self-love is the

motive of everything'--yet this thought is presented

under so many varied aspects that it is nearly always

striking. It is not so much a book as it is materials

for ornamenting a book. This little collection was

read with avidity, it taught people to think, and to

comprise their thoughts in a lively, precise, and delicate

turn of expression. This was a merit which, before

him, no one in Europe had attained since the revival

of letters."

Dr. Johnson speaks of it as "the only book written

by a man of fashion, of which professed authors need

be jealous."

Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, says,

"Till you come to know mankind by your experience,

I know no thing nor no man that can in the mean-

time bring you so well acquainted with them as Le

Duc de la Rochefoucauld. His little book of maxims,

which I would advise you to look into for some

moments at least every day of your life, is, I fear, too

like and too exact a picture of human nature. I own

it seems to degrade it, but yet my experience does not

convince me that it degrades it unjustly."

Bishop Butler, on the other hand, blames the book

in no measured terms. "There is a strange affecta-

tion," says the bishop, "in some people of explaining

away all particular affection, and representing the

whole life as nothing but one continued exercise

of self-love. Hence arise that surprising confusion

and perplexity in the Epicureans of old, Hobbes, the

author of 'Reflexions Morales,' and the whole set

of writers, of calling actions interested which are

done of the most manifest known interest, merely for

the gratification of a present passion."

The judgment the reader will be most inclined to

adopt will perhaps be either that of Mr. Hallam, "Con-

cise and energetic in expression, reduced to those

short aphorisms which leave much to the reader's

acuteness and yet save his labour, not often obscure,

and never wearisome, an evident generalisation of

long experience, without pedantry, without method,

without deductive reasonings, yet wearing an appear-

ance at least of profundity; they delight the intelli-

gent though indolent man of the world, and must be

read with some admiration by the philosopher . . . .

yet they bear witness to the contracted observation

and the precipitate inferences which an intercourse

with a single class of society scarcely fails to generate."

Or that of Addison, who speaks of Rochefoucauld

"as the great philosopher for administering consola-

tion to the idle, the curious, and the worthless part of

mankind."

We are fortunately in possession of materials such

as rarely exist to enable us to form a judgment of

Rochefoucauld's character. We have, with a vanity

that could only exist in a Frenchman, a description

or portrait of himself, of his own painting, and one of

those inimitable living sketches in which his great

enemy, Cardinal De Retz, makes all the chief actors in

the court of the regency of Anne of Austria pass

across the stage before us.

We will first look on the portrait Rochefoucauld has

left us of himself: "I am," says he, "of a medium height,

active, and well-proportioned. My complexion dark,

but uniform, a high forehead; and of moderate height,

black eyes, small, deep set, eyebrows black and thick

but well placed. I am rather embarrassed in talking of

my nose, for it is neither flat nor aquiline, nor large;

nor pointed: but I believe, as far as I can say, it is too

large than too small, and comes down just a trifle too

low. I have a large mouth, lips generally red enough,

neither shaped well nor badly. I have white teeth,

and fairly even. I have been told I have a little too

much chin. I have just looked at myself in the

glass to ascertain the fact, and I do not know how to

decide. As to the shape of my face, it is either

square or oval, but which I should find it very diffi-

cult to say. I have black hair, which curls by nature,

and thick and long enough to entitle me to lay claim

to a fine head. I have in my countenance somewhat

of grief and pride, which gives many people an

idea I despise them, although I am not at all given to

do so. My gestures are very free, rather inclined to

be too much so, for in speaking they make me use too

much action. Such, candidly, I believe I am in out-

ward appearance, and I believe it will be found that

what I have said above of myself is not far from

the real case. I shall use the same truthfulness in

the remainder of my picture, for I have studied my-

self sufficiently to know myself well; and I will lack

neither boldness to speak as freely as I can of my

good qualities, nor sincerity to freely avow that I

have faults.

"In the first place, to speak of my temper. I am

melancholy, and I have hardly been seen for the last

three or four years to laugh above three or four times.

It seems to me that my melancholy would be even

endurable and pleasant if I had none but what be-

longed to me constitutionally; but it arises from so

many other causes, fills my imagination in such a

way, and possesses my mind so strongly that for the

greater part of my time I remain without speaking a

word, or give no meaning to what I say. I am ex-

tremely reserved to those I do not know, and I am

not very open with the greater part of those I do. It

is a fault I know well, and I should neglect no means

to correct myself of it; but as a certain gloomy air

I have tends to make me seem more reserved than

I am in fact, and as it is not in our power to rid

ourselves of a bad expression that arises from a natu-

ral conformation of features, I think that even when

I have cured myself internally, externally some bad

expression will always remain.

"I have ability. I have no hesitation in saying it,

as for what purpose should I pretend otherwise. So

great circumvention, and so great depreciation, in

speaking of the gifts one has, seems to me to hide a

little vanity under an apparent modesty, and craftily

to try to make others believe in greater virtues than

are imputed to us. On my part I am content not to

be considered better-looking than I am, nor of a bet-

ter temper than I describe, nor more witty and clever

than I am. Once more, I have ability, but a mind

spoilt by melancholy, for though I know my own

language tolerably well, and have a good memory, a

mode of thought not particularly confused, I yet have

so great a mixture of discontent that I often say what

I have to say very badly.

"The conversation of gentlemen is one of the plea-

sures that most amuses me. I like it to be serious

and morality to form the substance of it. Yet I

also know how to enjoy it when trifling; and if I do

not make many witty speeches, it is not because I do

not appreciate the value of trifles well said, and that

I do not find great amusement in that manner of rail-

lery in which certain prompt and ready-witted per-

sons excel so well. I write well in prose; I do well

in verse; and if I was envious of the glory that

springs from that quarter, I think with a little labour

I could acquire some reputation. I like reading, in

general; but that in which one finds something to

polish the wit and strengthen the soul is what I like

best. But, above all, I have the greatest pleasure in

reading with an intelligent person, for then we reflect

constantly upon what we read, and the observations

we make form the most pleasant and useful form of

conversation there is.

"I am a fair critic of the works in verse and prose

that are shown me; but perhaps I speak my opinion

with almost too great freedom. Another fault in

me is that I have sometimes a spirit of delicacy far

too scrupulous, and a spirit of criticism far too severe.

I do not dislike an argument, and I often of my own

free will engage in one; but I generally back my

opinion with too much warmth, and sometimes, when

the wrong side is advocated against me, from the

strength of my zeal for reason, I become a little un-

reasonable myself.

"I have virtuous sentiments, good inclinations, and

so strong a desire to be a wholly good man that my

friend cannot afford me a greater pleasure than can-

didly to show me my faults. Those who know me

most intimately, and those who have the goodness

sometimes to give me the above advice, know that I

always receive it with all the joy that could be ex-

pected, and with all reverence of mind that could be

desired.

"I have all the passions pretty mildly, and pretty

well under control. I am hardly ever seen in a rage,

and I never hated any one. I am not, however, in-

capable of avenging myself if I have been offended,

or if my honour demanded I should resent an insult

put upon me; on the contrary, I feel clear that duty

would so well discharge the office of hatred in me

that I should follow my revenge with even greater

keenness than other people.

"Ambition does not weary me. I fear but few

things, and I do not fear death in the least. I am but

little given to pity, and I could wish I was not so at

all. Though there is nothing I would not do to com-

fort an afflicted person, and I really believe that one

should do all one can to show great sympathy to him

for his misfortune, for miserable people are so foolish

that this does them the greatest good in the world;

yet I also hold that we should be content with ex-

pressing sympathy, and carefully avoid having any.

It is a passion that is wholly worthless in a well-regu-

lated mind, which only serves to weaken the heart,

and which should be left to ordinary persons, who, as

they never do anything from reason, have need of

passions to stimulate their actions.

"I love my friends; and I love them to such an

extent that I would not for a moment weigh my

interest against theirs. I condescend to them, I

patiently endure their bad temper. But, also, I do

not make much of their caresses, and I do not feel

great uneasiness in their absence.

"Naturally, I have but little curiosity about the

majority of things that stir up curiosity in other men.

I am very secret, and I have less difficulty than most

men in holding my tongue as to what is told me in

confidence. I am most particular as to my word, and

I would never fail, whatever might be the conse-

quence, to do what I had promised; and I have made

this an inflexible law during the whole of my life.

"I keep the most punctilious civility to women. I

do not believe I have ever said anything before them

which could cause them annoyance. When their

intellect is cultivated, I prefer their society to that of

men: one there finds a mildness one does not meet

with among ourselves, and it seems to me beyond this

that they express themselves with more neatness, and

give a more agreeable turn to the things they talk

about. As for flirtation, I formerly indulged in a little,

now I shall do so no more, though I am still young.

I have renounced all flirtation, and I am simply

astonished that there are still so many sensible people

who can occupy their time with it.

"I wholly approve of real loves; they indicate great-

ness of soul, and although, in the uneasiness they give

rise to, there is a something contrary to strict wisdom,

they fit in so well with the most severe virtue, that I

believe they cannot be censured with justice. To me

who have known all that is fine and grand in the lofty

aspirations of love, if I ever fall in love, it will as-

suredly be in love of that nature. But in accordance

with the present turn of my mind, I do not believe

that the knowledge I have of it will ever change from

my mind to my heart."

Such is his own description of himself. Let us

now turn to the other picture, delineated by the man

who was his bitterest enemy, and whom (we say it

with regret) Rochefoucauld tried to murder.

Cardinal De Retz thus paints him:--

"In M. de la Rochefoucauld there was ever an

indescribable something. From his infancy he always

wanted to be mixed up with plots, at a time when he

could not understand even the smallest interests (which

has indeed never been his weak point,) or comprehend

greater ones, which in another sense has never been

his strong point. He was never fitted for any matter,

and I really cannot tell the reason. His glance was

not sufficiently wide, and he could not take in at once

all that lay in his sight, but his good sense, perfect in

theories, combined with his gentleness, his winning

ways, his pleasing manners, which are perfect, should

more than compensate for his lack of penetration.

He always had a natural irresoluteness, but I cannot

say to what this irresolution is to be attributed. It

could not arise in him from the wealth of his imagina-

tion, for that was anything but lively. I cannot put

it down to the barrenness of his judgment, for,

although he was not prompt in action, he had a good

store of reason. We see the effects of this irresolution,

although we cannot assign a cause for it. He was

never a general, though a great soldier; never, na-

turally, a good courtier, although he had always a good

idea of being so. He was never a good partizan,

although all his life engaged in intrigues. That air

of pride and timidity which your see in his private

life, is turned in business into an apologetic manner.

He always believed he had need of it; and this, com-

bined with his 'Maxims,' which show little faith in

virtue, and his habitual custom, to give up matters

with the same haste he undertook them, leads

me to the conclusion that he would have done far

better to have known his own mind, and have passed

himself off, as he could have done, for the most

polished courtier, the most agreeable man in private

life that had appeared in his century."

It is but justice to the Cardinal to say, that the

Duc is not painted in such dark colours as we should

have expected, judging from what we know of the

character of De Retz. With his marvellous power of

depicting character, a power unrivalled, except by St.

Simon and perhaps by Lord Clarendon, we should

have expected the malignity of the priest would have

stamped the features of his great enemy with the

impress of infamy, and not have simply made him

appear a courtier, weak, insincere, and nothing more.

Though rather beyond our subject, the character of

Cardinal de Retz, as delineated by Mdme. Sevigne, in

one of her letters, will help us to form a true conclu-

sion on the different characters of the Duc and the

Cardinal. She says:--

"Paul de Gondi Cardinal de Retz possesses great

elevation of character, a certain extent of intellect, and

more of the ostentation than of the true greatness of

courage. He has an extraordinary memory, more

energy than polish in his words, an easy humour,

docility of character, and weakness in submitting to

the complaints and reproaches of his friends, a little

piety, some appearances of religion. He appears

ambitious without being really so. Vanity and those

who have guided him, have made him undertake great

things, almost all opposed to his profession. He ex-

cited the greatest troubles in the State without any

design of turning them to account, and far from

declaring himself the enemy of Cardinal Mazarin

with any view of occupying his place, he thought of

nothing but making himself an object of dread to

him, and flattering himself with the false vanity of

being his rival. He was clever enough, however, to

take advantage of the public calamities to get himself

made Cardinal. He endured his imprisonment with

firmness, and owed his liberty solely to his own

daring. In the obscurity of a life of wandering and

concealment, his indolence for many years supported

him with reputation. He preserved the Archbishopric

of Paris against the power of Cardinal Mazarin, but

after the death of that minister, he resigned it without

knowing what he was doing, and without making use

of the opportunity to promote the interests of him-

self and his friends. He has taken part in several

conclaves, and his conduct has always increased his

reputation.

"His natural bent is to indolence, nevertheless he

labours with activity in pressing business, and reposes

with indifference when it is concluded. He has great

presence of mind, and knows so well how to turn it to

his own advantage on all occasions presented him by

fortune, that it would seem as if he had foreseen and

desired them. He loves to narrate, and seeks to

dazzle all his listeners indifferently by his extraor-

dinary adventures, and his imagination often supplies

him with more than his memory. The generality of

his qualities are false, and what has most contributed

to his reputation is his power of throwing a good light

on his faults. He is insensible alike to hatred and to

friendship, whatever pains he may be at to appear

taken up with the one or the other. He is incapable

of envy or avarice, whether from virtue or from care-

lessness. He has borrowed more from his friends

than a private person could ever hope to be able to

repay; he has felt the vanity of acquiring so much on

credit, and of undertaking to discharge it. He has

neither taste nor refinement; he is amused by every-

thing and pleased by nothing. He avoids difficult

matters with considerable address, not allowing people

to penetrate the slight acquaintance he has with every-

thing. The retreat he has just made from the world

is the most brilliant and the most unreal action of his

life; it is a sacrifice he has made to his pride under

the pretence of devotion; he quits the court to which

he cannot attach himself, and retires from a world

which is retiring from him."

The Maxims were first published in 1665, with a

preface by Segrais. This preface was omitted in the

subsequent editions. The first edition contained

316 maxims, counting the last upon death, which

was not numbered. The second in 1666 contained

only 102; the third in 1671, and the fourth in

1675, 413. In this last edition we first meet with

the introductory maxim, "Our virtues are gene-

rally but disguised vices." The edition of 1678,

the fifth, increased the number to 504. This was

the last edition revised by the author, and pub-

lished in his lifetime. The text of that edition has

been used for the present translation. The next

edition, the sixth, was published in 1693, about

thirteen years after the author's death. This edition

included fifty new maxims, attributed by the editor

to Rochefoucauld. Most likely they were his writing,

as the fact was never denied by his family, through

whose permission they were published. They form

the third supplement to the translation. This sixth

edition was published by Claude Barbin, and the

French editions since that time have been too nu-

merous to be enumerated. The great popularity of

the Maxims is perhaps best shown from the numerous

translations that have been made of them. No less

than eight English translations, or so-called transla-

tions, have appeared; one American, a Swedish, and

a Spanish translation, an Italian imitation, with

parallel passages, and an English imitation by Hazlitt.

The titles of the English editions are as follows:--

i. Seneca Unmasked. By Mrs. Aphara Behn. Lon-

don, 1689. She calls the author the Duke of

Rushfucave.

ii. Moral Maxims and Reflections, in four parts. By

the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Now made

English. London, 1694. 12 mo.

iii. Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de

la Rochefoucauld. Newly made English. Lon-

don, 1706. 12 mo.

iv. Moral Maxims of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Translated from the French. With notes. Lon-

don, 1749. 12 mo.

v. Maxims and Moral Reflections of the Duke de la

Rochefoucauld. Revised and improved. London,

1775. 8 vo.

vi. Maxims and Moral Reflections of the Duke de la

Rochefoucauld. A new edition, revised and im-

proved, by L. D. London, 1781. 8 vo.

vii. The Gentleman's Library. La Rochefoucauld's

Maxims and Moral Reflections. London, 1813.

12 mo.

viii.Moral Reflections, Sentences, and Maxims of

the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, newly translated

from the French; with an introduction and notes.

London, 1850. 16 mo.

ix. Maxims and Moral Reflections of the Duke de la

Rochefoucauld: with a Memoir by the Chevalier

de Chatelain. London, 1868. 12 mo.

The perusal of the Maxims will suggest to every

reader to a greater or less degree, in accordance with

the extent of his reading, parallel passages, and simi-

lar ideas. Of ancient writers Rochefoucauld most

strongly reminds us of Tacitus; of modern writers, Ju-

nius most strongly reminds us of Rochefoucauld. Some

examples from both are given in the notes to this trans-

lation. It is curious to see how the expressions of the

bitterest writer of English political satire to a great ex-

tent express the same ideas as the great French satirist

of private life. Had space permitted the parallel

could have been drawn very closely, and much of the

invective of Junius traced to its source in Rochefou-

cauld.

One of the persons whom Rochefoucauld patronised

and protected, was the great French fabulist, La

Fontaine. This patronage was repaid by La Fontaine

giving, in one of his fables, "L'Homme et son Image,"

an elaborate defence of his patron. After there depict-

ing a man who fancied himself one of the most lovely

in the world, and who complained he always found

all mirrors untrustworthy, at last discovered his real

image reflected in the water. He thus applies his

fable:--

"Je parle a tous: et cette erreur extreme,

Est un mal que chacun se plait d'entretenir,

Notre ame, c'est cet homme amoureux de lui meme,

Tant de miroirs, ce sont les sottises d'autrui.

Miroirs, de nos defauts les peintres legitimes,

Et quant au canal, c'est celui

Qui chacun sait, le livre des MAXIMES."

It is just this: the book is a mirror in which we

all see ourselves. This has made it so unpopular. It

is too true. We dislike to be told of our faults,

while we only like to be told of our neighbour's.

Notwithstanding Rousseau's assertion, it is young

men, who, before they know their own faults

and only know their neighbours', that read and tho-

roughly appreciate Rochefoucauld.

After so many varied opinions he then pleases us more

and seems far truer than he is in reality, it is impossible

to give any general conclusion of such distinguished

writers on the subject. Each reader will form his own

opinion of the merits of the author and his book. To

some, both will seem deserving of the highest praise; to

others both will seem deserving of the highest censure.

The truest judgment as to the author will be found in

the remarks of a countryman of his own, as to the

book in the remarks of a countryman of ours.

As to the author, M. Sainte Beuve says:--"C'etait un

misanthrope poli, insinuant, souriant, qui precedait

de bien peu et preparait avec charme l'autre MISAN-

THROPE."

As to the book, Mr. Hallam says:--"Among the

books in ancient and modern times which record the

conclusions of observing men on the moral qualities

of their fellows, a high place should be reserved for

the Maxims of Rochefoucauld".

REFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

[This epigraph which is the key to the system

of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form

as No. 179 of the maxims of the first edition, 1665, it is

omitted from the 2nd and 3rd, and reappears for the first

time in the 4th edition, in 1675, as at present, at the head

of the Reflections.--AIME MARTIN. Its best answer is ar-

rived at by reversing the predicate and the subject, and

you at once form a contradictory maxim equally true, our

vices are most frequently but virtues disguised.]

1.--What we term virtue is often but a mass of

various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or

our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not

always from valour or from chastity that men are

brave, and women chaste.

"Who combats bravely is not therefore brave,

He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave;

Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,

His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies."

Pope, MORAL ESSAYS, Ep. i. line 115.

2.--Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.

3.--Whatever discoveries have been made in the

region of self-love, there remain many unexplored ter-

ritories there.

[This is the first hint of the system the author tries to

develope. He wishes to find in vice a motive for all our

actions, but this does not suffice him; he is obliged to call

other passions to the help of his system and to confound

pride, vanity, interest and egotism with self love. This

confusion destroys the unity of his principle.--AIME

MARTIN.]

4.--Self love is more cunning than the most cunning

man in the world.

5.--The duration of our passions is no more de-

pendant upon us than the duration of our life.

[Then what becomes of free will?--AIME MARTIN]

6.--Passion often renders the most clever man a

fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man

clever.

7.--Great and striking actions which dazzle the

eyes are represented by politicians as the effect of

great designs, instead of which they are commonly

caused by the temper and the passions. Thus the war

between Augustus and Anthony, which is set down to

the ambition they entertained of making themselves

masters of the world, was probably but an effect of

jealousy.

8.--The passions are the only advocates which

always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules

of which are infallible; and the simplest man with

passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent

without.

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

9.--The passions possess a certain injustice and

self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them,

and in reality we should distrust them even when

they appear most trustworthy.

10.--In the human heart there is a perpetual gene-

ration of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost

always the foundation of another.

11.--Passions often produce their contraries: ava-

rice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to

avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness

and daring though timidity.

12.--Whatever care we take to conceal our pas-

sions under the appearances of piety and honour, they

are always to be seen through these veils.

[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps

better--"however we may conceal our passions under the

veil, etc., there is always some place where they peep out."]

13.--Our self love endures more impatiently the

condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

14.--Men are not only prone to forget benefits and

injuries; they even hate those who have obliged them,

and cease to hate those who have injured them. The

necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing

a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling

to submit.

15.--The clemency of Princes is often but policy

to win the affections of the people.

["So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by

clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame and endear

them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them

to have an opportunity of displaying it."--Montesquieu,

ESPRIT DES LOIS, LIB. VI., C. 21.]

16.--This clemency of which they make a merit,

arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idle-

ness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all

three combined.

[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which

he lived. Here the clemency spoken of is nothing more

than an expression of the policy of Anne of Austria.

Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the favour

of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she be-

stowed her favours upon those she hated; her friends were

forgotten.--AIME MARTIN. The reader will hereby see

that the age in which the writer lived best interprets his

maxims.]

17.--The moderation of those who are happy arises

from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their

temper.

18.--Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting

the envy and contempt which those merit who are

intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain dis-

play of our strength of mind, and in short the mo-

deration of men at their greatest height is only a

desire to appear greater than their fortune.

19.--We have all sufficient strength to support the

misfortunes of others.

[The strongest example of this is the passage in Lucre-

tius, lib. ii., line I:--

"Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis

E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem."]

20.--The constancy of the wise is only the talent of

concealing the agitation of their hearts.

[Thus wisdom is only hypocrisy, says a commentator.

This definition of constancy is a result of maxim 18.]

21.--Those who are condemned to death affect some-

times a constancy and contempt for death which is

only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that

this constancy and contempt are to their mind what

the bandage is to their eyes.

[See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]

22.--Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and

future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

23.--Few people know death, we only endure it,

usually from determination, and even from stupidity

and custom; and most men only die because they

know not how to prevent dying.

24.--When great men permit themselves to be cast

down by the continuance of misfortune, they show

us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not

by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes

are made like other men.

[Both these maxims have been rewritten and made

conciser by the author; the variations are not worth

quoting.]

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

evil fortune.

["Prosperity do{th} best discover vice, but adversity do{th}

best discover virtue."--Lord Bacon, ESSAYS{, (1625), "Of

Adversity"}.]

{The quotation wrongly had "does" for "doth".}

26.--Neither the sun nor death can be looked at

without winking.

27.--People are often vain of their passions, even

of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and

shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

28.--Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable,

as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or

which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand

envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of

others.

29.--The evil that we do does not attract to us so

much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.

30.--We have more strength than will; and it is

often merely for an excuse we say things are impos-

sible.

31.--If we had no faults we should not take so much

pleasure in noting those of others.

32.--Jealousy lives upon doubt; and comes to an

end or becomes a fury as soon as it passes from

doubt to certainty.

33.--Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even

when it casts away vanity.

[See maxim 450, where the author states, what we take

from our other faults we add to our pride.]

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

that of others.

["The proud are ever most provoked by pride."-Cow-

per, CONVERSATION 160.]

35.--Pride is much the same in all men, the only

difference is the method and manner of showing it.

["Pride bestowed on all a common friend."--Pope,

ESSAY ON MAN, Ep. ii., line 273.]

36.--It would seem that nature, which has so wisely

ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has

also given us pride to spare us the mortification of

knowing our imperfections.

37.--Pride has a larger part than goodness in our

remonstrances with those who commit faults, and we

reprove them not so much to correct as to persuade

them that we ourselves are free from faults.

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

form according to our fears.

["The reason why the Cardinal (Mazarin) deferred so long

to grant the favours he had promised, was because he was

persuaded that hope was much more capable of keeping

men to their duty than gratitude."--FRAGMENTS HISTORIQUES.

RACINE.]

39.--Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays

all sorts of characters; even that of disinterestedness.

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

41.--Those who apply themselves too closely to

little things often become incapable of great things.

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

reason.

43.--A man often believes himself leader when he

is led; as his mind endeavours to reach one goal, his

heart insensibly drags him towards another.

44.--Strength and weakness of mind are mis-named;

they are really only the good or happy arrangement of

our bodily organs.

45.--The caprice of our temper is even more whim-

sical than that of Fortune.

46.--The attachment or indifference which philoso-

phers have shown to life is only the style of their self

love, about which we can no more dispute than of that

of the palate or of the choice of colours.

47.--Our temper sets a price upon every gift that

we receive from fortune.

48.--Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things

themselves; we are happy from possessing what we

like, not from possessing what others like.

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

suppose.

50.--Those who think they have merit persuade

themselves that they are honoured by being unhappy,

in order to persuade others and themselves that they

are worthy to be the butt of fortune.

["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable

men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and

certain it is{, that where} we cannot distinguish ourselves by some-

thing excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some

singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other."

--Burke, {ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL, (1756), Part I, Sect. XVII}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH

AMERICA. Also, Burke does not actually write "Ambition has been...",

he writes "It has been..." when speaking of ambition.}

51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfac-

tion which we feel with ourselves as seeing that we

disapprove at one time of that which we approve of

at another.

52.--Whatever difference there appears in our for-

tunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of

good and evil which renders them equal.

53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give,

it is not she alone, but fortune also that makes the

hero.

54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was

only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the

injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of

which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to

guard themselves against the degradation of poverty,

it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinc-

tion which they could not gain by riches.

["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior

ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that

pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their

reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of

the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty

and ignorance."--Gibbon, DECLINE AND FALL, CHAP. 15.]

55.--The hate of favourites is only a love of favour.

The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its

regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who pos-

sess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able

to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of

the world.

56.--To establish ourselves in the world we do

everything to appear as if we were established.

57.--Although men flatter themselves with their

great actions, they are not so often the result of a

great design as of chance.

58.--It would seem that our actions have lucky or

unlucky stars to which they owe a great part of the

blame or praise which is given them.

59.--There are no accidents so unfortunate from

which skilful men will not draw some advantage, nor

so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to

their hurt.

60.--Fortune turns all things to the advantage of

those on whom she smiles.

61.--The happiness or unhappiness of men depends

no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.

["Still to ourselves in every place consigned

Our own felicity we make or find."

Goldsmith, TRAVELLER, 431.]

62.--Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in

very few people; what we usually see is only an artful

dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

63.--The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambi-

tion to render our words credible and weighty, and

to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.

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

as its counterfeits do evil.

65.--There is no praise we have not lavished upon

Prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most

trifling event.

[The author corrected this maxim several times, in 1665

it is No. 75; 1666, No. 66; 1671-5, No. 65; in the last

edition it stands as at present. In the first he quotes

Juvenal, Sat. X., line 315.

" Nullum numen habes si sit Prudentia, nos te;

Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus."

Applying to Prudence what Juvenal does to Fortune, and

with much greater force.]

66.--A clever man ought to so regulate his interests

that each will fall in due order. Our greediness so

often troubles us, making us run after so many things

at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after

the least we miss the greatest.

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

mind.

68.--It is difficult to define love; all we can say is,

that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is

a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and deli-

cate wish to possess what we love--PLUS many

mysteries.

["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be

singularly beloved."--Hobbes{, LEVIATHAN, (1651), Part I,

Chapter VI}.]

{Two notes about this quotation: (1) the translators' mistakenly

have "singularity" for the first "singularly" and (2) Hobbes does

not actually write "Love is the..."--he writes "Love of one..."

under the heading "The passion of Love."}

69.--If there is a pure love, exempt from the mix-

ture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed

at the bottom of the heart and of which even our-

selves are ignorant.

70.--There is no disguise which can long hide love

where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.

71.--There are few people who would not be

ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer.

72.--If we judge of love by the majority of its

results it rather resembles hatred than friendship.

73.--We may find women who have never indulged

in an intrigue, but it is rare to find those who have

intrigued but once.

["Yet there are some, they say, who have had {NONE};

But those who have, ne'er end with only {ONE}."

{--Lord Byron, }DON JUAN, {Canto} iii., stanza 4.]

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

thousand different copies.

75.--Neither love nor fire can subsist without per-

petual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease

to hope, or to fear.

[So Lord Byron{, STANZAS, (1819), stanza 3} says of Love--

"Like chiefs of faction,

His life is action."]

76.--There is real love just as there are real ghosts;

every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

["Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art--

An unseen seraph, we believe in thee--

A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--

But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see

The naked eye, thy form as it should be."

{--Lord Byron, }CHILDE HAROLD, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]

77.--Love lends its name to an infinite number of

engagements (COMMERCES) which are attributed to it,

but with which it has no more concern than the Doge

has with all that is done in Venice.

78.--The love of justice is simply in the majority of

men the fear of suffering injustice.

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

himself.

80.--What renders us so changeable in our friend-

ship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the

soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

81.--We can love nothing but what agrees with us,

and we can only follow our taste or our pleasure when

we prefer our friends to ourselves; nevertheless it is

only by that preference that friendship can be true

and perfect.

82.--Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire

to better our condition, a weariness of war, the fear

of some unlucky accident.

["Thus terminated that famous war of the Fronde. * *

The Duke de la Rochefoucauld desired peace because of

his dangerous wounds and ruined castles, which had made

him dread even worse events. On the other side the

Queen, who had shown herself so ungrateful to her too

ambitious friends, did not cease to feel the bitterness of

their resentment. 'I wish,' said she, 'it were always

night, because daylight shows me so many who have

betrayed me.'"--MEMOIRES DE MADAME DE MOTTEVILLE, TOM.

IV., p. 60. Another proof that although these maxims

are in some cases of universal application, they were based

entirely on the experience of the age in which the author

lived.]

83.--What men term friendship is merely a partner-

ship with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an

exchange of favours--in fact it is but a trade in which

self love always expects to gain something.

84.--It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be

deceived by our friends.

85.--We often persuade ourselves to love people

who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone

produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts

away for the good we wish to do, but for that we ex-

pect to receive.

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

87.--Men would not live long in society were they

not the dupes of each other.

[A maxim, adds Aime Martin, "Which may enter into

the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find

it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority

for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."--2 TIM. iii. 13.]

88.--Self love increases or diminishes for us the

good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the

satisfaction we feel with them, and we judge of their

merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

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

his judgment.

90.--In the intercourse of life, we please more by

our faults than by our good qualities.

91.--The largest ambition has the least appearance

of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossi-

bility in compassing its object.

92.--To awaken a man who is deceived as to his

own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done

to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing

that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.

[That is, they cured him. The madman was Thrasyllus,

son of Pythodorus. His brother Crito cured him, when

he infinitely regretted the time of his more pleasant mad-

ness.--See Aelian, VAR. HIST. iv. 25. So Horace--

-------------"Pol, me occidistis, amici,

Non servastis," ait, "cui sic extorta voluptas

Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

HOR. EP. ii--2, 138,

of the madman who was cured of a pleasant lunacy.]

93.--Old men delight in giving good advice as a

consolation for the fact that they can no longer set

bad examples.

94.--Great names degrade instead of elevating those

who know not how to sustain them.

95.--The test of extraordinary merit is to see those

who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it.

96.--A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less

chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.

97.--We are deceived if we think that mind and

judgment are two different matters: judgment is but

the extent of the light of the mind. This light pene-

trates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that

can be remarked, and perceives what appears imper-

ceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the ex-

tent of the light in the mind that produces all the

effects which we attribute to judgment.

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

their understanding.

99.--Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste

and refined thoughts.

100.--Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty

things in an agreeable manner.

101.--Ideas often flash across our minds more com-

plete than we could make them after much labour.

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

[A feeble imitation of that great thought "All folly

comes from the heart."--AIME MARTIN. But Bonhome, in his

L'ART DE PENSER, says "Plusieurs diraient en periode quarre

que quelques reflexions que fasse l'esprit et quelques resolu-

tions qu'il prenne pour corriger ses travers le premier sen-

timent du coeur renverse tous ses projets. Mais il n'appar-

tient qu'a M. de la Rochefoucauld de dire tout en un mot

que l'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur."]

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

sarily know their hearts.

104.--Men and things have each their proper per-

spective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to

see them near, of others we can never judge rightly

but at a distance.

105.--A man for whom accident discovers sense, is

not a rational being. A man only is so who under-

stands, who distinguishes, who tests it.

106.--To understand matters rightly we should

understand their details, and as that knowledge is

almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial

and imperfect.

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

flirt.

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

heart.

109.--Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its

blood, age retains its tastes by habit.

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

111.--The more we love a woman the more prone

we are to hate her.

112.--The blemishes of the mind, like those of the

face, increase by age.

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

marriages.

114.--We are inconsolable at being deceived by our

enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet still we are

often content to be thus served by ourselves.

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

to deceive others.

116.--Nothing is less sincere than the way of asking

and giving advice. The person asking seems to pay

deference to the opinion of his friend, while thinking

in reality of making his friend approve his opinion

and be responsible for his conduct. The person

giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him

by eager and disinterested zeal, in doing which he is

usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.

["I have often thought how ill-natured a maxim it was

which on many occasions I have heard from people of

good understanding, 'That as to what related to private

conduct no one was ever the better for advice.' But upon

further examination I have resolved with myself that the

maxim might be admitted without any violent prejudice

to mankind. For in the manner advice was generally given

there was no reason I thought to wonder it should be so

ill received, something there was which strangely inverted

the case, and made the giver to be the only gainer. For

by what I could observe in many occurrences of our lives,

that which we called giving advice was properly taking an

occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense.

On the other side to be instructed or to receive advice on

the terms usually prescribed to us was little better than

tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a

character from our defects."--Lord Shaftesbury, CHARAC-

TERISTICS, i., 153.]

117.--The most subtle of our acts is to simulate

blindness for snares that we know are set for us. We

are never so easily deceived as when trying to deceive.

118.--The intention of never deceiving often exposes

us to deception.

119.--We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves

to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.

["Those who quit their proper character{,} to assume what

does not belong to them, are{,} for the greater part{,} ignorant

both of the character they leave{,} and of the character they

assume."--Burke, {REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, (1790),

Paragraph 19}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE

OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS.}

120.--We often act treacherously more from weak-

ness than from a fixed motive.

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

impunity to do evil.

122.--If we conquer our passions it is more from

their weakness than from our strength.

123.--If we never flattered ourselves we should have

but scant pleasure.

124.--The most deceitful persons spend their lives

in blaming deceit, so as to use it on some great occa-

sion to promote some great interest.

125.--The daily employment of cunning marks a

little mind, it generally happens that those who resort

to it in one respect to protect themselves lay them-

selves open to attack in another.

["With that low cunning which in fools supplies,

And amply, too, the place of being wise."

Churchill, ROSCIAD, 117.]

126.--Cunning and treachery are the offspring of

incapacity.

127.--The true way to be deceived is to think one-

self more knowing than others.

128.--Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy,

true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.

129.--It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to

avoid being deceived by cunning men.

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

cured.

131.--The smallest fault of women who give them-

selves up to love is to love.

[------"Faciunt graviora coactae

Imperio sexus minimumque libidine peccant."

Juvenal, SAT. vi., 134.]

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

be so for oneself.

[Hence the proverb, "A man who is his own lawyer

has a fool for his client."]

133.--The only good examples are those, that make

us see the absurdity of bad originals.

134.--We are never so ridiculous from the habits we

have as from those that we affect to have.

135.--We sometimes differ more widely from our-

selves than we do from others.

136.--There are some who never would have loved

if they never had heard it spoken of.

137.--When not prompted by vanity we say little.

138.--A man would rather say evil of himself than

say nothing.

["Montaigne's vanity led him to talk perpetually of

himself, and as often happens to vain men, he would rather

talk of his own failings than of any foreign subject."--

Hallam, LITERATURE OF EUROPE.]

139.--One of the reasons that we find so few

persons rational and agreeable in conversation is

there is hardly a person who does not think more of

what he wants to say than of his answer to what is

said. The most clever and polite are content with

only seeming attentive while we perceive in their

mind and eyes that at the very time they are wander-

ing from what is said and desire to return to what they

want to say. Instead of considering that the worst

way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly

to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to

answer well are some of the greatest charms we can

have in conversation.

["An absent man can make but few observations, he can

pursue nothing steadily because his absences make him

lose his way. They are very disagreeable and hardly to be

tolerated in old age, but in youth they cannot be forgiven."

--Lord Chesterfield, LETTER 195.]

140.--If it was not for the company of fools, a witty

man would often be greatly at a loss.

141.--We often boast that we are never bored, but

yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how

often we bore others.

142.--As it is the mark of great minds to say many

things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to

use many words to say nothing.

["So much they talked, so very little said."

Churchill, ROSCIAD, 550.

"Men who are unequal to the labour of discussing an ar-

gument or wish to avoid it, are willing enough to suppose

that much has been proved because much has been said."--

Junius, JAN. 1769.]

143.--It is oftener by the estimation of our own

feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others

than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish

to attract their praise.

144.--We do not like to praise, and we never praise

without a motive. Praise is flattery, artful, hidden,

delicate, which gratifies differently him who praises

and him who is praised. The one takes it as the re-

ward of merit, the other bestows it to show his im-

partiality and knowledge.

145.--We often select envenomed praise which, by

a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could

not have shown by other means.

146.--Usually we only praise to be praised.

147.--Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure

which is useful to praise which is treacherous.

148.--Some reproaches praise; some praises re-

proach.

["Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."

Pope {ESSAY ON MAN, (1733), EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.}]

149.--The refusal of praise is only the wish to be

praised twice.

[The modesty which pretends to refuse praise is but in

truth a desire to be praised more highly. EDITION 1665.]

150.--The desire which urges us to deserve praise

strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to

wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.

151.--It is easier to govern others than to prevent

being governed.

152.--If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of

others would not hurt us.

["Adulatione servilia fingebant securi de fragilitate cre-

dentis." Tacit. Ann. xvi.]

153.--Nature makes merit but fortune sets it to

work.

154.--Fortune cures us of many faults that reason

could not.

155.--There are some persons who only disgust with

their abilities, there are persons who please even with

their faults.

156.--There are persons whose only merit consists

in saying and doing stupid things at the right time,

and who ruin all if they change their manners.

157.--The fame of great men ought always to be

estimated by the means used to acquire it.

158.--Flattery is base coin to which only our vanity

gives currency.

159.--It is not enough to have great qualities, we

should also have the management of them.

160.--However brilliant an action it should not be

esteemed great unless the result of a great motive.

161.--A certain harmony should be kept between

actions and ideas if we desire to estimate the effects

that they produce.

162.--The art of using moderate abilities to advan-

tage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation

than real brilliancy.

163.--Numberless arts appear foolish whose secre{t}

motives are most wise and weighty.

164.--It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we

do not fill than for those we do.

165.--Ability wins us the esteem of the true men,

luck that of the people.

166.--The world oftener rewards the appearance of

merit than merit itself.

167.--Avarice is more opposed to economy than to

liberality.

168.--However deceitful hope may be, yet she

carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.

["Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die."

Pope: ESSAY ON MAN, Ep. ii.]

169.--Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty,

but our virtue often gets the praise.

["Quod segnitia erat sapientia vocaretur."

Tacitus Hist. I.]

170.--If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult

to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill.

171.--As rivers are lost in the sea so are virtues in

self.

172.--If we thoroughly consider the varied effects

of indifference we find we miscarry more in our duties

than in our interests.

173.--There are different kinds of curiosity: one

springs from interest, which makes us desire to know

everything that may be profitable to us; another from

pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what

others are ignorant of.

174.--It is far better to accustom our mind to bear

the ills we have than to speculate on those which may

befall us.

["Rather bear th{ose} ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of."

{--Shakespeare, HAMLET, Act III, Scene I, Hamlet.}]

175.--Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy

which causes our heart to attach itself to all the quali-

ties of the person we love in succession, sometimes

giving the preference to one, sometimes to another.

This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited

to the same person.

176.--There are two kinds of constancy in love, one

arising from incessantly finding in the loved one fresh

objects to love, the other from regarding it as a point

of honour to be constant.

177.--Perseverance is not deserving of blame or

praise, as it is merely the continuance of tastes and

feelings which we can neither create or destroy.

178.--What makes us like new studies is not so

much the weariness we have of the old or the wish

for change as the desire to be admired by those who

know more than ourselves, and the hope of advantage

over those who know less.

179.--We sometimes complain of the levity of our

friends to justify our own by anticipation.

180.--Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the

ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to

us.

181.--One sort of inconstancy springs from levity or

weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's

opinion, and another more excusable comes from a

surfeit of matter.

182.--Vices enter into the composition of virtues as

poison into that of medicines. Prudence collects and

blends the two and renders them useful against the ills

of life.

183.--For the credit of virtue we must admit that

the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which

they fall through their crimes.

184.--We admit our faults to repair by our sincerity

the evil we have done in the opinion of others.

[In the edition of 1665 this maxim stands as No. 200.

We never admit our faults except through vanity.]

185.--There are both heroes of evil and heroes of

good.

[Ut alios industria ita hunc ignavia protulerat ad famam,

habebaturque non ganeo et profligator sed erudito luxu.

--Tacit. Ann. xvi.]

186.--We do not despise all who have vices, but we

do despise all who have not virtues.

["If individuals have no virtues their vices may be of

use to us."--JUNIUS, 5th Oct. 1771.]

187.--The name of virtue is as useful to our interest

as that of vice.

188.--The health of the mind is not less uncertain

than that of the body, and when passions seem

furthest removed we are no less in danger of infec-

tion than of falling ill when we are well.

189.--It seems that nature has at man's birth fixed

the bounds of his virtues and vices.

190.--Great men should not have great faults.

191.--We may say vices wait on us in the course of

our life as the landlords with whom we successively

lodge, and if we travelled the road twice over I

doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.

192.--When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves

with the idea we have left them.

193.--There are relapses in the diseases of the mind

as in those of the body; what we call a cure is often

no more than an intermission or change of disease.

194.--The defects of the mind are like the wounds

of the body. Whatever care we take to heal them

the scars ever remain, and there is always danger of

their reopening.

195.--The reason which often prevents us abandon-

ing a single vice is having so many.

196.--We easily forget those faults which are known

only to ourselves.

[Seneca says "Innocentem quisque se dicit respiciens

testem non conscientiam."]

197.--There are men of whom we can never believe

evil without having seen it. Yet there are very few

in whom we should be surprised to see it.

198.--We exaggerate the glory of some men to

detract from that of others, and we should praise

Prince Conde and Marshal Turenne much less if we

did not want to blame them both.

[The allusion to Conde and Turenne gives the date at

which these maxims were published in 1665. Conde and

Turenne were after their campaign with the Imperialists

at the height of their fame. It proves the truth of the

remark of Tacitus, "Populus neminem sine aemulo sinit."--

Tac. Ann. xiv.]

199.--The desire to appear clever often prevents our

being so.

200.--Virtue would not go far did not vanity

escort her.

201.--He who thinks he has the power to content

the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks

that the world cannot be content with him deceives

himself yet more.

202.--Falsely honest men are those who disguise

their faults both to themselves and others; truly honest

men are those who know them perfectly and confess

them.

203.--He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.

204.--The coldness of women is a balance and bur-

den they add to their beauty.

205.--Virtue in woman is often the love of reputa-

tion and repose.

206.--He is a truly good man who desires always to

bear the inspection of good men.

207.--Folly follows us at all stages of life. If one

appears wise 'tis but because his folly is proportioned

to his age and fortune.

208.--There are foolish people who know and who

skilfully use their folly.

209.--Who lives without folly is not so wise as he

thinks.

210.--In growing old we become more foolish--and

more wise.

211.--There are people who are like farces, which

are praised but for a time (however foolish and dis-

tasteful they may be).

[The last clause is added from Edition of 1665.]

212.--Most people judge men only by success or by

fortune.

213.--Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune,

the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and

the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that

bravery so vaunted among men.

[Junius said of the Marquis of Granby, "He was as

brave as a total absence of all feeling and reflection could

make him."--21st Jan. 1769.]

214.--Valour in common soldiers is a perilous

method of earning their living.

["Men venture necks to gain a fortune,

The soldier does it ev{'}ry day,

(Eight to the week) for sixpence pay."

{--Samuel Butler,} HUDIBRAS, Part II., canto i., line 512.]

215.--Perfect bravery and sheer cowardice are two

extremes rarely found. The space between them is

vast, and embraces all other sorts of courage. The

difference between them is not less than between faces

and tempers. Men will freely expose themselves at

the beginning of an action, and relax and be easily

discouraged if it should last. Some are content to

satisfy worldly honour, and beyond that will do little

else. Some are not always equally masters of their

timidity. Others allow themselves to be overcome

by panic; others charge because they dare not remain

at their posts. Some may be found whose courage is

strengthened by small perils, which prepare them to

face greater dangers. Some will dare a sword cut and

flinch from a bullet; others dread bullets little and fear

to fight with swords. These varied kinds of courage

agree in this, that night, by increasing fear and conceal-

ing gallant or cowardly actions, allows men to spare

themselves. There is even a more general discretion

to be observed, for we meet with no man who does all

he would have done if he were assured of getting off

scot-free; so that it is certain that the fear of death

does somewhat subtract from valour.

[See also "Table Talk of Napoleon," who agrees with

this, so far as to say that few, but himself, had a two

o'clock of the morning valour.]

216.--Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what

one would do before all the world.

["It is said of untrue valours that some men's valours are

in the eyes of them that look on."--Bacon, ADVANCEMENT

OF LEARNING{, (1605), Book I, Section II, paragraph 5}.]

217.--Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of

soul which raises it above the troubles, disorders, and

emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in

it: by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and

preserve their reason and liberty in the most sur-

prising and terrible accidents.

218.--Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

[So Massillon, in one of his sermons, "Vice pays homage

to virtue in doing honour to her appearance."

So Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, says, "You

have done as much mischief to the community as Machia-

vel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of

morals and religion are useful in society."--28 Sept. 1771.]

219.--Most men expose themselves in battle enough

to save their honor, few wish to do so more than

sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design

for which they expose themselves succeed.

220.--Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often

make men brave and women chaste.

["Vanity bids all her sons be brave and all her daughters

chaste and courteous. But why do we need her instruc-

tion?"--Sterne, SERMONS.]

221.--We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to

gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact

and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in

preserving their fortunes.

222.--Few persons on the first approach of age do

not show wherein their body, or their mind, is begin-

ning to fail.

223.--Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants:

it holds commerce together; and we do not pay be-

cause it is just to pay debts, but because we shall

thereby more easily find people who will lend.

224.--All those who pay the debts of gratitude can-

not thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful.

225.--What makes false reckoning, as regards gra-

titude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver

cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.

["The first foundation of friendship is not the power of

conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are

received, and may be returned."--Junius's LETTER TO THE

KING.]

226.--Too great a hurry to discharge of an obliga-

tion is a kind of ingratitude.

227.--Lucky people are bad hands at correcting

their faults; they always believe that they are right

when fortune backs up their vice or folly.

["The power of fortune is confessed only by the misera-

ble, for the happy impute all their success to prudence and

merit."--Swift, THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS]

228.--Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.

229.--The good we have received from a man should

make us excuse the wrong he does us.

230.--Nothing is so infectious as example, and we

never do great good or evil without producing the like.

We imitate good actions by emulation, and bad ones

by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons

until example liberates.

231.--It is great folly to wish only to be wise.

232.--Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it

is always interest or vanity that causes them.

233.--In afflictions there are various kinds of hypo-

crisy. In one, under the pretext of weeping for one

dear to us we bemoan ourselves; we regret her good

opinion of us, we deplore the loss of our comfort, our

pleasure, our consideration. Thus the dead have the

credit of tears shed for the living. I affirm 'tis a kind

of hypocrisy which in these afflictions deceives itself.

There is another kind not so innocent because it im-

poses on all the world, that is the grief of those who

aspire to the glory of a noble and immortal sorrow.

After Time, which absorbs all, has obliterated what

sorrow they had, they still obstinately obtrude their

tears, their sighs their groans, they wear a solemn face,

and try to persuade others by all their acts, that their

grief will end only with their life. This sad and

distressing vanity is commonly found in ambitious

women. As their sex closes to them all paths to glory,

they strive to render themselves celebrated by show-

ing an inconsolable affliction. There is yet another

kind of tears arising from but small sources, which

flow easily and cease as easily. One weeps to achieve

a reputation for tenderness, weeps to be pitied, weeps

to be bewept, in fact one weeps to avoid the disgrace

of not weeping!

["In grief the {PLEASURE} is still uppermost{;} and the afflic-

tion we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain which

is always odious, and which we endeavour to shake off as

soon as possible."--Burke, SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL{, (1756),

Part I, Sect. V}.]

234.--It is more often from pride than from igno-

rance that we are so obstinately opposed to current

opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do

not want to be the last.

235.--We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of

our friends when they enable us to prove our tender-

ness for them.

236.--It would seem that even self-love may be the

dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for

others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to

arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of

giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and de-

licate manner.

237.--No one should be praised for his goodness if

he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other

goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness

of will.

238.--It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most

men, as to do them too much good.

239.--Nothing flatters our pride so much as the

confidence of the great, because we regard it as the

result of our worth, without remembering that gene-

rally 'tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret.

240.--We may say of conformity as distinguished

from beauty, that it is a symmetry which knows no

rules, and a secret harmony of features both one with

each other and with the colour and appearance of the

person.

241.--Flirtation is at the bottom of woman's nature,

although all do not practise it, some being restrained

by fear, others by sense.

["By nature woman is a flirt, but her flirting changes

both in the mode and object according to her opinions."--

Rousseau, EMILE.]

242.--We often bore others when we think we

cannot possibly bore them.

243.--Few things are impossible in themselves;

application to make them succeed fails us more often

than the means.

244.--Sovereign ability consists in knowing the

value of things.

245.--There is great ability in knowing how to con-

ceal one's ability.

["You have accomplished a great stroke in diplomacy

when you have made others think that you have only very

average abilities."--LA BRUYERE.]

246.--What seems generosity is often disguised am-

bition, that despises small to run after greater inte-

rest.

247.--The fidelity of most men is merely an inven-

tion of self-love to win confidence; a method to place

us above others and to render us depositaries of the

most important matters.

248.--Magnanimity despises all, to win all.

249.--There is no less eloquence in the voice, in the

eyes and in the air of a speaker than in his choice of

words.

250.--True eloquence consists in saying all that

should be, not all that could be said.

251.--There are people whose faults become them,

others whose very virtues disgrace them.

["There are faults which do him honour, and virtues

that disgrace him."--Junius, LETTER OF 28TH MAY, 1770.]

252.--It is as common to change one's tastes, as it

is uncommon to change one's inclinations.

253.--Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and

vices.

254.--Humility is often a feigned submission which

we employ to supplant others. It is one of the de-

vices of Pride to lower us to raise us; and truly pride

transforms itself in a thousand ways, and is never so

well disguised and more able to deceive than when it

hides itself under the form of humility.

["Grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for busi-

ness."--Junius, LETTER TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,

A cottage of gentility,

And the devil was pleased, for his darling sin

Is the pride that apes humility."

Southey, DEVIL'S WALK.]

{There are numerous corrections necessary for this

quotation; I will keep the original above so you can

compare the correct passages:

"He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,

A cottage of gentility,

And he owned with a grin,

That his favourite sin

Is pride that apes humility."

--Southey, DEVIL'S WALK, Stanza 8.

"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin

Is pride that apes humility."

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS}

255.--All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice,

gestures and looks, and this harmony, as it is good

or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, makes people agreeable

or disagreeable.

256.--In all professions we affect a part and an ap-

pearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world

is merely composed of actors.

["All the world's a stage, and all the men and women

merely players."--Shakespeare, AS YOU LIKE IT{, Act II,

Scene VII, Jaques}.

"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the

hero should preserve his consistency to the last."--Junius.]

257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body

invented to conceal the want of mind.

["Gravity is the very essence of imposture."--Shaftes-

bury, CHARACTERISTICS, p. 11, vol. I. "The very essence of

gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick

to gain credit with the world for more sense and know-

ledge than a man was worth, and that with all its preten-

sions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French

wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the

body to cover the defects of the mind."--Sterne, TRISTRAM

SHANDY, vol. I., chap. ii.]

258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than

wit.

259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are hap-

pier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.

260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and

to be esteemed polite.

261.--The usual education of young people is to in-

spire them with a second self-love.

262.--There is no passion wherein self-love reigns

so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready

to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.

263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity

of giving, which we like more than that we give away.

264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in

the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the

troubles into which we may fall. We help others

that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves,

and these services which we render, are in reality

benefits we confer on ourselves by anticipation.

["GRIEF for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth

from the imagination that a like calamity may befal him-

self{;} and therefore is called compassion."--HOBBES' LEVIA-

THAN{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]

265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do

not easily believe what we cannot see.

["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong."

Dryden, ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL{, line 547}.]

266.--We deceive ourselves if we believe that there

are violent passions like ambition and love that can

triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is,

does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps

authority over all the plans and actions of life; im-

perceptibly consuming and destroying both passions

and virtues.

267.--A quickness in believing evil without having

sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and

laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not

wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.

268.--We credit judges with the meanest motives,

and yet we desire our reputation and fame should

depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either

from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of in-

telligence, opposed to us--and yet 'tis only to make

these men decide in our favour that we peril in so

many ways both our peace and our life.

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

he does.

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

271.--Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the

fever of reason.

["The best of life is but intoxication."--{Lord Byron, }

Don Juan{, Canto II, stanza 179}.

In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes with--"it is

the fever of health, the folly of reason."]

272.--Nothing should so humiliate men who have

deserved great praise, as the care they have taken

to acquire it by the smallest means.

273.--There are persons of whom the world approves

who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the

affairs of life.

274.--The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower

to the fruit; it lends a lustre which is easily lost,

but which never returns.

275.--Natural goodness, which boasts of being so

apparent, is often smothered by the least interest.

276.--Absence extinguishes small passions and in-

creases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle,

and blow in a fire.

277.--Women often think they love when they do

not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of

mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards

the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing,

persuades them that they have real passion when they

have but flirtation.

["And if in fact she takes a {"}GRANDE PASSION{"},

It is a very serious thing indeed:

Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion,

Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead,

The pride of a mere child with a new sash on.

Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed:

But the {TENTH} instance will be a tornado,

For there's no saying what they will or may do."

{--Lord Byron, }DON JUAN, canto xii. stanza 77.]

278.--What makes us so often discontented with

those who transact business for us is that they almost

always abandon the interest of their friends for the

interest of the business, because they wish to have

the honour of succeeding in that which they have

undertaken.

279.--When we exaggerate the tenderness of our

friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude

than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.

280.--The praise we give to new comers into the

world arises from the envy we bear to those who are

established.

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

rate envy.

282.--Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that

we should judge badly were we not deceived.

283.--Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing

how to use than in giving good advice.

284.--There are wicked people who would be much

less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.

285.--Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its

name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense

of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

286.--It is impossible to love a second time those

whom we have really ceased to love.

287.--Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so

many resources on the same matter, as the lack of

intelligence makes us hesitate at each thing our ima-

gination presents, and hinders us from at first discern-

ing which is the best.

288.--There are matters and maladies which at

certain times remedies only serve to make worse;

true skill consists in knowing when it is dangerous to

use them.

289.--Affected simplicity is refined imposture.

[Domitianus simplicitatis ac modestiae imagine studium

litterarum et amorem carminum simulabat quo velaret

animum et fratris aemulationi subduceretur.--Tacitus,

ANN. iv.]

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

mind.

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

292.--One may say of temper as of many buildings;

it has divers aspects, some agreeable, others dis-

agreeable.

293.--Moderation cannot claim the merit of op-

posing and overcoming Ambition: they are never

found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth

of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.

294.--We always like those who admire us, we do

not always like those whom we admire.

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

296.--It is difficult to love those we do not esteem,

but it is no less so to love those whom we esteem much

more than ourselves.

297.--Bodily temperaments have a common course

and rule which imperceptibly affect our will. They

advance in combination, and successively exercise a

secret empire over us, so that, without our perceiving

it, they become a great part of all our actions.

298.--The gratitude of most men is but a secret

desire of receiving greater benefits.

[Hence the common proverb "Gratitude is merely a

lively sense of favors to come."]

299.--Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying

small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling,

but there is hardly one who does not show ingrati-

tude for great favours.

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

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

bestow wealth.

302.--Only in things of small value we usually are

bold enough not to trust to appearances.

303.--Whatever good quality may be imputed to

us, we ourselves find nothing new in it.

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

forgive those whom we bore.

305.--Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds

often should be praised for our good deeds.

306.--We find very few ungrateful people when we

are able to confer favours.

307.--It is as proper to be boastful alone as it is

ridiculous to be so in company.

308.--Moderation is made a virtue to limit the am-

bition of the great; to console ordinary people for

their small fortune and equally small ability.

309.--There are persons fated to be fools, who com-

mit follies not only by choice, but who are forced by

fortune to do so.

310.--Sometimes there are accidents in our life the

skilful extrication from which demands a little folly.

311.--If there be men whose folly has never ap-

peared, it is because it has never been closely looked

for.

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

always speak of themselves.

313.--How is it that our memory is good enough to

retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet

not good enough to recollect how often we have told

it to the same person?

["Old men who yet retain the memory of things past,

and forget how often they have told them, are most tedious

companions."--Montaigne, {ESSAYS, Book I, Chapter IX}.]

314.--The extreme delight we take in talking of

ourselves should warn us that it is not shared by those

who listen.

315.--What commonly hinders us from showing the

recesses of our heart to our friends, is not the dis-

trust we have of them, but that we have of our-

selves.

316.--Weak persons cannot be sincere.

317.--'Tis a small misfortune to oblige an ungrate-

ful man; but it is unbearable to be obliged by a

scoundrel.

318.--We may find means to cure a fool of his folly,

but there are none to set straight a cross-grained

spirit.

319.--If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults

we cannot long preserve the feelings we should hold

towards our friends and benefactors.

320.--To praise princes for virtues they do not pos-

sess is but to reproach them with impunity.

["Praise undeserved is satire in disguise," quoted by

Pope from a poem which has not survived, "The Garland,"

by Mr. Broadhurst. "In some cases exaggerated or

inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire."--

Scott, WOODSTOCK.]

321.--We are nearer loving those who hate us, than

those who love us more than we desire.

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

despised.

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

than our goods.

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

325.--We often comfort ourselves by the weakness

of evils, for which reason has not the strength to con-

sole us.

326.--Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour

itself.

["No," says a commentator, "Ridicule may do harm,

but it cannot dishonour; it is vice which confers dis-

honour."]

327.--We own to small faults to persuade others

that we have not great ones.

328.--Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

329.--We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery

--we only dislike the method.

["{But} when I tell him he hates flatter{ers},

He says he does, being then most flattered."

Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR{, Act II, Scene I, Decius}.]

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

331.--It is more difficult to be faithful to a mistress

when one is happy, than when we are ill-treated by

her.

[Si qua volet regnare diu contemnat amantem.--Ovid,

AMORES, ii. 19.]

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

flirtation.

333.--Women cannot be completely severe unless

they hate.

334.--Women can less easily resign flirtations than

love.

335.--In love deceit almost always goes further

than mistrust.

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

forbids jealousy.

337.--There are certain good qualities as there are

senses, and those who want them can neither per-

ceive nor understand them.

338.--When our hatred is too bitter it places us

below those whom we hate.

339.--We only appreciate our good or evil in pro-

portion to our self-love.

340.--The wit of most women rather strengthens

their folly than their reason.

["Women have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit,

but for solid reasoning and good sense I never knew one in

my life that had it, and who reasoned and acted conse-

quentially for four and twenty hours together."--Lord

Chesterfield, LETTER 129.]

341.--The heat of youth is not more opposed to

safety than the coldness of age.

342.--The accent of our native country dwells in

the heart and mind as well as on the tongue.

343.--To be a great man one should know how to

profit by every phase of fortune.

344.--Most men, like plants, possess hidden quali-

ties which chance discovers.

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

more to ourselves.

346.--If a woman's temper is beyond control there

can be no control of the mind or heart.

347.--We hardly find any persons of good sense, save

those who agree with us.

["That was excellently observed, say I, when I read

an author when his opinion agrees with mine."--Swift,

THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.]

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

most believes.

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

flirtation.

350.--Why we hate with so much bitterness those

who deceive us is because they think themselves more

clever than we are.

["I could pardon all his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I can-

not forgive his supposing me capable of the gross folly

of being duped by his professions."--Sir Walter Scott,

QUENTIN DURWARD.]

351.--We have much trouble to break with one,

when we no longer are in love.

352.--We almost always are bored with persons with

whom we should not be bored.

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

like a beast.

354.--There are certain defects which well mounted

glitter like virtue itself.

355.--Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our

regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom

our grief is greater than our regret.

356.--Usually we only praise heartily those who

admire us.

357.--Little minds are too much wounded by little

things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

358.--Humility is the true proof of Christian

virtues; without it we retain all our faults, and they

are only covered by pride to hide them from others,

and often from ourselves.

359.--Infidelities should extinguish love, and we

ought not to be jealous when we have cause to be so.

No persons escape causing jealousy who are worthy of

exciting it.

360.--We are more humiliated by the least infidelity

towards us, than by our greatest towards others.

361.--Jealousy is always born with love, but does

not always die with it.

362.--Most women do not grieve so much for the

death of their lovers for love's-sake, as to show they

were worthy of being beloved.

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

than those we do to ourselves.

364.--We well know that it is bad taste to talk of

our wives; but we do not so well know that it is the

same to speak of ourselves.

365.--There are virtues which degenerate into vices

when they arise from Nature, and others which when

acquired are never perfect. For example, reason

must teach us to manage our estate and our con-

fidence, while Nature should have given us goodness

and valour.

366.--However we distrust the sincerity of those

whom we talk with, we always believe them more sin-

cere with us than with others.

367.--There are few virtuous women who are not

tired of their part.

["Every woman is at heart a rake."--Pope. MORAL

ESSAYS, ii.]

368.--The greater number of good women are like

concealed treasures, safe as no one has searched for

them.

369.--The violences we put upon ourselves to escape

love are often more cruel than the cruelty of those

we love.

370.--There are not many cowards who know the

whole of their fear.

371.--It is generally the fault of the loved one not

to perceive when love ceases.

372.--Most young people think they are natural

when they are only boorish and rude.

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

ceive ourselves.

374.--If we think we love a woman for love of

herself we are greatly deceived.

375.--Ordinary men commonly condemn what is

beyond them.

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

tion by true love.

377.--The greatest mistake of penetration is not to

have fallen short, but to have gone too far.

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

the conduct.

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

380.--Fortune makes visible our virtues or our

vices, as light does objects.

381.--The struggle we undergo to remain faithful

to one we love is little better than infidelity.

382.--Our actions are like the rhymed ends of

blank verses (BOUTS-RIMES) where to each one puts

what construction he pleases.

[The BOUTS-RIMES was a literary game popular in the 17th

and 18th centuries--the rhymed words at the end of a line

being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole

being given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the bur-

lesque verse--

"I sits with my toes in a BROOK,

And if any one axes me WHY?

I gies 'em a rap with my CROOK,

'Tis constancy makes me, ses I."]

383.--The desire of talking about ourselves, and of

putting our faults in the light we wish them to be

seen, forms a great part of our sincerity.

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

able to be astonished.

385.--It is equally as difficult to be contented when

one has too much or too little love.

386.--No people are more often wrong than those

who will not allow themselves to be wrong.

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

388.--If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at

least she makes them totter.

389.--What makes the vanity of others unsupport-

able is that it wounds our own.

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

taste.

391.--Fortune appears so blind to none as to those

to whom she has done no good.

392.--We should manage fortune like our health,

enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad,

and never resort to strong remedies but in an extremity.

393.--Awkwardness sometimes disappears in the

camp, never in the court.

394.--A man is often more clever than one other, but

not than all others.

["Singuli decipere ac decipi possunt, nemo omnes,

omnes neminem fefellerunt."--Pliny{ the Younger,

PANEGYRICUS, LXII}.]

395.--We are often less unhappy at being deceived

by one we loved, than on being deceived.

396.--We keep our first lover for a long time--if we

do not get a second.

397.--We have not the courage to say generally

that we have no faults, and that our enemies have

no good qualities; but in fact we are not far from be-

lieving so.

398.--Of all our faults that which we most readily

admit is idleness: we believe that it makes all virtues

ineffectual, and that without utterly destroying, it at

least suspends their operation.

399.--There is a kind of greatness which does not

depend upon fortune: it is a certain manner what

distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for

great things; it is the value we insensibly set upon

ourselves; it is by this quality that we gain the

deference of other men, and it is this which com-

monly raises us more above them, than birth, rank,

or even merit itself.

400.--There may be talent without position, but

there is no position without some kind of talent.

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

woman.

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

403.--Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us,

and there are tiresome people whose deserts would be

ill rewarded if we did not desire to purchase their

absence.

404.--It appears that nature has hid at the bottom

of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It

is only the passions that have the power of bringing

them to light, and sometimes give us views more

true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

405.--We reach quite inexperienced the different

stages of life, and often, in spite of the number of our

years, we lack experience.

["To most men experience is like the stern lights of a

ship which illumine only the track it has passed."--

Coleridge.]

406.--Flirts make it a point of honour to be jealous

of their lovers, to conceal their envy of other women.

407.--It may well be that those who have trapped

us by their tricks do not seem to us so foolish as we

seem to ourselves when trapped by the tricks of

others.

408.--The most dangerous folly of old persons who

have been loveable is to forget that they are no

longer so.

["Every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself

handsome. The suspicion of age no woman, let her be

ever so old, forgives."--Lord Chesterfield, LETTER 129.]

409.--We should often be ashamed of our very best

actions if the world only saw the motives which caused

them.

410.--The greatest effort of friendship is not to show

our faults to a friend, but to show him his own.

4ll.--We have few faults which are not far more

excusable than the means we adopt to hide them.

412.--Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it

is almost always in our power to re-establish our cha-

racter.

["This is hardly a period at which the most irregular

character may not be redeemed. The mistakes of one sin

find a retreat in patriotism, those of the other in devotion."

-Junius, LETTER TO THE KING.]

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

kind of wit.

[According to Segrais this maxim was a hit at Racine

and Boileau, who, despising ordinary conversation, talked

incessantly of literature; but there is some doubt as to

Segrais' statement.--Aime Martin.]

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

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

impunity.

416.--The vivacity which increases in old age is not

far removed from folly.

["How ill {white} hairs become {a} fool and jester."--

Shakespeare{, King Henry IV, Part II, Act. V, Scene V,

King}.

"Can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of

life? Can grey hairs make folly venerable, and is there

no period to be reserved for meditation or retirement."--

Junius, TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD, 19th Sept. 1769.]

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

418.--Young women who do not want to appear

flirts, and old men who do not want to appear ridi-

culous, should not talk of love as a matter wherein

they can have any interest.

419.--We may seem great in a post beneath our

capacity, but we oftener seem little in a post above it.

420.--We often believe we have constancy in mis-

fortune when we have nothing but debasement, and

we suffer misfortunes without regarding them as

cowards who let themselves be killed from fear of

defending themselves.

421.--Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

422.--All passions make us commit some faults,

love alone makes us ridiculous.

["In love we all are fools alike."--Gay{, THE

BEGGAR'S OPERA, (1728), Act III, Scene I, Lucy}.]

423.--Few know how to be old.

424.--We often credit ourselves with vices the

reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of

our obstinacy.

425.--Penetration has a spice of divination in it

which tickles our vanity more than any other quality

of the mind.

426.--The charm of novelty and old custom, how-

ever opposite to each other, equally blind us to the

faults of our friends.

["Two things the most opposite blind us equally, custom

and novelty."-La Bruyere, DES JUDGEMENTS.]

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

devotees of devotion.

428.--We easily forgive in our friends those faults

we do not perceive.

429.--Women who love, pardon more readily great

indiscretions than little infidelities.

430.--In the old age of love as in life we still sur-

vive for the evils, though no longer for the pleasures.

["The youth of friendship is better than its old age."--

Hazlitt's CHARACTERISTICS, 229.]

431.--Nothing prevents our being unaffected so

much as our desire to seem so.

432.--To praise good actions heartily is in some

measure to take part in them.

433.--The most certain sign of being born with

great qualities is to be born without envy.

["Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae."

-Cicero IN MARC ANT.]

434.--When our friends have deceived us we owe

them but indifference to the tokens of their friend-

ship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe them

pity.

435.--Luck and temper rule the world.

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

man.

437.--We should not judge of a man's merit by his

great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.

438.--There is a certain lively gratitude which not

only releases us from benefits received, but which also,

by making a return to our friends as payment, renders

them indebted to us.

["And understood not that a grateful mind,

By owing owes not, but is at once

Indebted and discharged."

Milton. PARADISE LOST.]

439.--We should earnestly desire but few things if

we clearly knew what we desired.

440.--The cause why the majority of women are so

little given to friendship is, that it is insipid after

having felt love.

["Those who have experienced a great passion neglect

friendship, and those who have united themselves to friend-

ship have nought to do with love."--La Bruyere. DU COEUR.]

441.--As in friendship so in love, we are often hap-

pier from ignorance than from knowledge.

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

to correct.

443.--The most violent passions give some respite,

but vanity always disturbs us.

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

["MALVOLIO. Infirmity{,} that decays the wise{,} doth eve{r}

make the better fool.

CLOWN. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the

better increasing of your folly."--Shakespeare. TWELFTH

NIGHT{, Act I, Scene V}.]

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

446.--What makes the grief of shame and jealousy

so acute is that vanity cannot aid us in enduring them.

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

obeyed.

[Honour has its supreme laws, to which education is

bound to conform....Those things which honour

forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do

not concur in the prohibition, and those it commands are

more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be

commanded by law.--Montesquieu, {THE SPIRIT OF LAWS, }b. 4,

c. ii.]

448.--A well-trained mind has less difficulty in sub-

mitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.

449.--When fortune surprises us by giving us some

great office without having gradually led us to expect

it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh

impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy

to fill it.

450.--Our pride is often increased by what we

retrench from our other faults.

["The loss of sensual pleasures was supplied and com-

pensated by spiritual pride."--Gibbon. DECLINE AND FALL,

chap. xv.]

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

wit.

452.--No one believes that in every respect he is

behind the man he considers the ablest in the world.

453.--In great matters we should not try so much

to create opportunities as to utilise those that offer

themselves.

[Yet Lord Bacon says "A wise man will make more

opportunities than he finds."--Essays, {(1625),

"Of Ceremonies and Respects"}]

454.--There are few occasions when we should make

a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that

no ill was said of us.

455.--However disposed the world may be to judge

wrongly, it far oftener favours false merit than does

justice to true.

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

with discretion.

457.--We should gain more by letting the world see

what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.

458.--Our enemies come nearer the truth in the

opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of

ourselves.

459.--There are many remedies to cure love, yet

none are infallible.

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

passions make us do.

461.--Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of

life all the pleasures of youth.

462.--The same pride which makes us blame faults

from which we believe ourselves free causes us to

despise the good qualities we have not.

463.--There is often more pride than goodness in

our grief for our enemies' miseries; it is to show how

superior we are to them, that we bestow on them the

sign of our compassion.

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

surpasses our comprehension.

465.--Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the

same protection as crime.

466.--Of all the violent passions the one that

becomes a woman best is love.

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

than reason.

468.--Some bad qualities form great talents.

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

reason.

470.--All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful,

both the good as well as the bad, and nearly all are

creatures of opportunities.

471.--In their first passion women love their lovers,

in all the others they love love.

["In her first passion woman loves her lover,

In all her others what she loves is love."

{--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, Canto iii., stanza 3.

"We truly love once, the first time; the subsequent pas-

sions are more or less involuntary." La Bruyere: DU COEUR.]

472.--Pride as the other passions has its follies. We

are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume

ourselves in having been and being able to be so.

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

rarer.

["It is more common to see perfect love than real friend-

ship."--La Bruyere. DU COEUR.]

474.--There are few women whose charm survives

their beauty.

475.--The desire to be pitied or to be admired often

forms the greater part of our confidence.

476.--Our envy always lasts longer than the happi-

ness of those we envy.

477.--The same firmness that enables us to resist

love enables us to make our resistance durable and

lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by

passions are seldom really possessed of any.

478.--Fancy does not enable us to invent so many

different contradictions as there are by nature in every

heart.

479.--It is only people who possess firmness who

can possess true gentleness. In those who appear

gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily

converted into harshness.

480.--Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to

blame in those we desire to cure of it.

481.--Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those

who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

482.--The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit

to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places

bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet

taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to

the full extent of its capacities.

483.--Usually we are more satirical from vanity

than malice.

484.--When the heart is still disturbed by the relics

of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than

when wholly cured.

485.--Those who have had great passions often find

all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.

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

without envy.

["I do not believe that there is a human creature in his

senses arrived at maturity, that at some time or other has

not been carried away by this passion (envy) in good

earnest, and yet I never met with any who dared own he

was guilty of it, but in jest."--Mandeville: FABLE OF THE

BEES; Remark N.]

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

the body.

488.--The calm or disturbance of our mind does

not depend so much on what we regard as the more

important things of life, as in a judicious or injudicious

arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.

489.--However wicked men may be, they do not

dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when

they desire to persecute her they either pretend to

believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

490.--We often go from love to ambition, but we

never return from ambition to love.

["Men commence by love, finish by ambition, and do

not find a quieter seat while they remain there."--La

Bruyere: DU COEUR.]

491.--Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken,

there is no passion which is oftener further away from

its mark, nor upon which the present has so much

power to the prejudice of the future.

492.--Avarice often produces opposite results: there

are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their

property to doubtful and distant expectations, others

mistake great future advantages for small present

interests.

[AIME MARTIN says, "The author here confuses greedi-

ness, the desire and avarice--passions which probably have

a common origin, but produce different results. The

greedy man is nearly always desirous to possess, and often

foregoes great future advantages for small present interests.

The avaricious man, on the other hand, mistakes present

advantages for the great expectations of the future. Both

desire to possess and enjoy. But the miser possesses and

enjoys nothing but the pleasure of possessing; he risks

nothing, gives nothing, hopes nothing, his life is centred

in his strong box, beyond that he has no want."]

493.--It appears that men do not find they have

enough faults, as they increase the number by certain

peculiar qualities that they affect to assume, and

which they cultivate with so great assiduity that at

length they become natural faults, which they can no

longer correct.

494.--What makes us see that men know their

faults better than we imagine, is that they are never

wrong when they speak of their conduct; the same

self-love that usually blinds them enlightens them,

and gives them such true views as to make them

suppress or disguise the smallest thing that might be

censured.

495.--Young men entering life should be either shy

or bold; a solemn and sedate manner usually de-

generates into impertinence.

496.--Quarrels would not last long if the fault was

only on one side.

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

pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

498.--Some persons are so frivolous and fickle that

they are as far removed from real defects as from

substantial qualities.

499.--We do not usually reckon a woman's first

flirtation until she has had a second.

500.--Some people are so self-occupied that when

in love they find a mode by which to be engrossed

with the passion without being so with the person

they love.

501.--Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more

by its ways than by itself.

502.--A little wit with good sense bores less in the

long run than much wit with ill nature.

503.--Jealousy is the worst of all evils, yet the one

that is least pitied by those who cause it.

504.--Thus having treated of the hollowness of so

many apparent virtues, it is but just to say something

on the hollowness of the contempt for death. I allude

to that contempt of death which the heathen boasted

they derived from their unaided understanding, with-

out the hope of a future state. There is a difference

between meeting death with courage and despising it.

The first is common enough, the last I think always

feigned. Yet everything that could be has been

written to persuade us that death is no evil, and the

weakest of men, equally with the bravest, have given

many noble examples on which to found such an

opinion, still I do not think that any man of good sense

has ever yet believed in it. And the pains we take to

persuade others as well as ourselves amply show that

the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may

be disgusted with life, but for none may we despise it.

Not even those who commit suicide regard it as a

light matter, and are as much alarmed and startled

as the rest of the world if death meets them in a dif-

ferent way than the one they have selected. The differ-

ence we observe in the courage of so great a number of

brave men, is from meeting death in a way different

from what they imagined, when it shows itself nearer at

one time than at another. Thus it ultimately happens

that having despised death when they were ignorant

of it, they dread it when they become acquainted with

it. If we could avoid seeing it with all its surround-

ings, we might perhaps believe that it was not the

greatest of evils. The wisest and bravest are those

who take the best means to avoid reflecting on it, as

every man who sees it in its real light regards it as

dreadful. The necessity of dying created all the con-

stancy of philosophers. They thought it but right to

go with a good grace when they could not avoid going,

and being unable to prolong their lives indefinitely,

nothing remained but to build an immortal reputation,

and to save from the general wreck all that could be

saved. To put a good face upon it, let it suffice, not

to say all that we think to ourselves, but rely more

on our nature than on our fallible reason, which might

make us think we could approach death with indif-

ference. The glory of dying with courage, the hope

of being regretted, the desire to leave behind us a

good reputation, the assurance of being enfranchised

from the miseries of life and being no longer depend-

ent on the wiles of fortune, are resources which

should not be passed over. But we must not regard

them as infallible. They should affect us in the same

proportion as a single shelter affects those who in war

storm a fortress. At a distance they think it may

afford cover, but when near they find it only a feeble

protection. It is only deceiving ourselves to imagine

that death, when near, will seem the same as at

a distance, or that our feelings, which are merely

weaknesses, are naturally so strong that they will

not suffer in an attack of the rudest of trials. It

is equally as absurd to try the effect of self-esteem

and to think it will enable us to count as naught

what will of necessity destroy it. And the mind in

which we trust to find so many resources will be far

too weak in the struggle to persuade us in the way we

wish. For it is this which betrays us so frequently,

and which, instead of filling us with contempt of death,

serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful.

The most it can do for us is to persuade us to avert

our gaze and fix it on other objects. Cato and Brutus

each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime ago

contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when

he was about to be broken on the wheel. So however

diverse the motives they but realize the same result.

For the rest it is a fact that whatever difference there

may be between the peer and the peasant, we have

constantly seen both the one and the other meet death

with the same composure. Still there is always this

difference, that the contempt the peer shows for death

is but the love of fame which hides death from his

sight; in the peasant it is but the result of his limited

vision that hides from him the extent of the evil, end

leaves him free to reflect on other things.

THE FIRST SUPPLEMENT

[The following reflections are extracted from the first two

editions of La Rochefoucauld, having been suppressed

by the author in succeeding issues.]

I.--Self-love is the love OF self, and of all things

FOR self. It makes men self-worshippers, and if for-

tune permits them, causes them to tyrannize over

others; it is never quiet when out of itself, and only

rests upon other subjects as a bee upon flowers, to

extract from them its proper food. Nothing is so

headstrong as its desires, nothing so well concealed as

its designs, nothing so skilful as its management; its

suppleness is beyond description; its changes surpass

those of the metamorphoses, its refinements those of

chemistry. We can neither plumb the depths nor

pierce the shades of its recesses. Therein it is hidden

from the most far-seeing eyes, therein it takes a thou-

sand imperceptible folds. There it is often to itself

invisible; it there conceives, there nourishes and rears,

without being aware of it, numberless loves and

hatreds, some so monstrous that when they are brought

to light it disowns them, and cannot resolve to avow

them. In the night which covers it are born the

ridiculous persuasions it has of itself, thence come its

errors, its ignorance, its silly mistakes; thence it is

led to believe that its passions which sleep are dead,

and to think that it has lost all appetite for that of

which it is sated. But this thick darkness which con-

ceals it from itself does not hinder it from seeing that

perfectly which is out of itself; and in this it re-

sembles our eyes which behold all, and yet cannot set

their own forms. In fact, in great concerns and im-

portant matters when the violence of its desires sum-

mons all its attention, it sees, feels, hears, imagines,

suspects, penetrates, divines all: so that we might

think that each of its passions had a magic power

proper to it. Nothing is so close and strong as its

attachments, which, in sight of the extreme misfor-

tunes which threaten it, it vainly attempts to break.

Yet sometimes it effects that without trouble and

quickly, which it failed to do with its whole power

and in the course of years, whence we may fairly con-

clude that it is by itself that its desires are inflamed,

rather than by the beauty and merit of its objects,

that its own taste embellishes and heightens them;

that it is itself the game it pursues, and that it follows

eagerly when it runs after that upon which itself is

eager. It is made up of contraries. It is imperious and

obedient, sincere and false, piteous and cruel, timid

and bold. It has different desires according to the

diversity of temperaments, which turn and fix it some-

times upon riches, sometimes on pleasures. It changes

according to our age, our fortunes, and our hopes;

it is quite indifferent whether it has many or one,

because it can split itself into many portions, and

unite in one as it pleases. It is inconstant, and besides

the changes which arise from strange causes it has

an infinity born of itself, and of its own substance.

It is inconstant through inconstancy, of lightness,

love, novelty, lassitude and distaste. It is capricious,

and one sees it sometimes work with intense eager-

ness and with incredible labour to obtain things of

little use to it which are even hurtful, but which it

pursues because it wishes for them. It is silly, and

often throws its whole application on the utmost

frivolities. It finds all its pleasure in the dullest

matters, and places its pride in the most contemptible.

It is seen in all states of life, and in all conditions; it

lives everywhere and upon everything; it subsists on

nothing; it accommodates itself either to things or to

the want of them; it goes over to those who are at war

with it, enters into their designs, and, this is wonderful,

it, with them, hates even itself; it conspires for its own

loss, it works towards its own ruin--in fact, caring only

to exist, and providing that it may BE, it will be its own

enemy! We must therefore not be surprised if it is

sometimes united to the rudest austerity, and if it

enters so boldly into partnership to destroy her,

because when it is rooted out in one place it re-esta-

blishes itself in another. When it fancies that it

abandons its pleasure it merely changes or suspends

its enjoyment. When even it is conquered in its full

flight, we find that it triumphs in its own defeat.

Here then is the picture of self-love whereof the whole

of our life is but one long agitation. The sea is its

living image; and in the flux and reflux of its con-

tinuous waves there is a faithful expression of the

stormy succession of its thoughts and of its eternal

motion. (Edition of 1665, No. 1.)

II.--Passions are only the different degrees of the

heat or coldness of the blood. (1665, No. 13.)

III.--Moderation in good fortune is but apprehen-

sion of the shame which follows upon haughtiness, or

a fear of losing what we have. (1665, No. 18.)

IV.--Moderation is like temperance in eating; we

could eat more but we fear to make ourselves ill.

(1665, No. 21.)

V.--Everybody finds that to abuse in another which

he finds worthy of abuse in himself. (1665, No. 33.)

VI.--Pride, as if tired of its artifices and its different

metamorphoses, after having solely filled the divers

parts of the comedy of life, exhibits itself with

its natural face, and is discovered by haughtiness; so

much so that we may truly say that haughtiness is but

the flash and open declaration of pride. (1665, No. 37.)

VII.--One kind of happiness is to know exactly at

what point to be miserable. (1665, No. 53.)

VIII.--When we do not find peace of mind (REPOS)

in ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere. (1665,

No. 53.)

IX.--One should be able to answer for one's fortune,

so as to be able to answer for what we shall do. (1665,

No. 70.)

X.--Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the

soul is to the body which it animates. (1665, No. 77.)

XI.--As one is never at liberty to love or to cease

from loving, the lover cannot with justice complain

of the inconstancy of his mistress, nor she of the

fickleness of her lover. (1665, No. 81.)

XII.--Justice in those judges who are moderate

is but a love of their place. (1665, No. 89.)

XIII.--When we are tired of loving we are quite

content if our mistress should become faithless, to loose

us from our fidelity. (1665, No. 85.)

XIV.--The first impulse of joy which we feel at the

happiness of our friends arises neither from our

natural goodness nor from friendship; it is the result

of self-love, which flatters us with being lucky in

our own turn, or in reaping something from the good

fortune of our friends. (1665, No. 97.)

XV.--In the adversity of our best friends we

always find something which is not wholly displeasing

to us. (1665, No. 99.)

[This gave occasion to Swift's celebrated "Verses on his

own Death." The four first are quoted opposite the title,

then follow these lines:--

"This maxim more than all the rest,

Is thought too base for human breast;

In all distresses of our friends,

We first consult our private ends;

While nature kindly bent to ease us,

Points out some circumstance to please us."

See also Chesterfield's defence of this in his 129th letter;

"they who know the deception and wickedness of the

human heart will not be either romantic or blind enough to

deny what Rochefoucauld and Swift have affirmed as a

general truth."]

XVI.--How shall we hope that another person will

keep our secret if we do not keep it ourselves. (1665,

No. 100.)

XVII.--As if it was not sufficient that self-love

should have the power to change itself, it has added

that of changing other objects, and this it does in a

very astonishing manner; for not only does it so well

disguise them that it is itself deceived, but it even

changes the state and nature of things. Thus, when

a female is adverse to us, and she turns her hate

and persecution against us, self-love pronounces

on her actions with all the severity of justice;

it exaggerates the faults till they are enormous,

and looks at her good qualities in so disadvan-

tageous a light that they become more displeasing than

her faults. If however the same female becomes

favourable to us, or certain of our interests reconcile

her to us, our sole self interest gives her back the

lustre which our hatred deprived her of. The bad

qualities become effaced, the good ones appear with

a redoubled advantage; we even summon all our

indulgence to justify the war she has made upon us.

Now although all passions prove this truth, that of

love exhibits it most clearly; for we may see a

lover moved with rage by the neglect or the infidelity

of her whom he loves, and meditating the utmost

vengeance that his passion can inspire. Nevertheless

as soon as the sight of his beloved has calmed the

fury of his movements, his passion holds that beauty

innocent; he only accuses himself, he condemns his

condemnations, and by the miraculous power of self-

love, he whitens the blackest actions of his mistress,

and takes from her all crime to lay it on himself.

{No date or number is given for this maxim}

XVIII.--There are none who press so heavily on

others as the lazy ones, when they have satisfied their

idleness, and wish to appear industrious. (1666,

No. 91.)

XIX.--The blindness of men is the most dangerous

effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment

it, it deprives us of knowledge of remedies which can

solace our miseries and can cure our faults. (1665,

No. 102.)

XX.--One has never less reason than when one

despairs of finding it in others. (1665, No. 103.)

XXI.--Philosophers, and Seneca above all, have not

diminished crimes by their precepts; they have only

used them in the building up of pride. (1665, No. 105.)

XXII.--It is a proof of little friendship not to per-

ceive the growing coolness of that of our friends.

(1666, No. 97.)

XXIII.--The most wise may be so in indifferent and

ordinary matters, but they are seldom so in their

most serious affairs. (1665, No. 132.)

XXIV.--The most subtle folly grows out of the most

subtle wisdom. (1665, No. 134.)

XXV.--Sobriety is the love of health, or an in-

capacity to eat much. (l665, No. 135.)

XXVI.--We never forget things so well as when we

are tired of talking of them. (1665, No. 144.)

XXVII.--The praise bestowed upon us is at least

useful in rooting us in the practice of virtue. (1665,

No. 155.)

XXVIII.--Self-love takes care to prevent him whom

we flatter from being him who most flatters us. (1665,

No. 157.)

XXIX.--Men only blame vice and praise virtue

from interest. (1665, No. 151.)

XXX.--We make no difference in the kinds of anger,

although there is that which is light and almost inno-

cent, which arises from warmth of complexion, tem-

perament, and another very criminal, which is, to

speak properly, the fury of pride. (1665, No. 159.)

XXXI.--Great souls are not those who have fewer

passions and more virtues than the common, but

those only who have greater designs. (1665, No. 161.)

XXXII.--Kings do with men as with pieces of

money; they make them bear what value they will,

and one is forced to receive them according to their

currency value, and not at their true worth. (1665,

No. 165.)

[See Burns{, FOR A' THAT AN A' THAT}--

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

{The} man's {the gowd} for a' that."

Also Farquhar and other parallel passages pointed out in

FAMILIAR WORDS.]

XXXIII.--Natural ferocity makes fewer people

cruel than self-love. (1665, No. 174.)

XXXIV.--One may say of all our virtues as an

Italian poet says of the propriety of women, that it

is often merely the art of appearing chaste. (1665,

No. 176.)

XXXV.--There are crimes which become innocent

and even glorious by their brilliancy,* their number, or

their excess; thus it happens that public robbery is

called financial skill, and the unjust capture of pro-

vinces is called a conquest. (1665, No. 192.)

*<Some crimes may be excused by their brilliancy, such

as those of Jael, of Deborah, of Brutus, and of Charlotte

Corday--further than this the maxim is satire.>

XXXVI.--One never finds in man good or evil in

excess. (1665, No. 201.)

XXXVII.--Those who are incapable of committing

great crimes do not easily suspect others. (1665,

No. {2}08.)

{The text incorrectly numbers this maxim as 508. It

is 208.}

XXXVIII.--The pomp of funerals concerns rather

the vanity of the living, than the honour of the

dead. (1665, No. 213.)

XXXIX.--Whatever variety and change appears in

the world, we may remark a secret chain, and a regu-

lated order of all time by Providence, which makes

everything follow in due rank and fall into its de-

stined course. (1665, No. 225.)

XL.--Intrepidity should sustain the heart in con-

spiracies in place of valour which alone furnishes all

the firmness which is necessary for the perils of war.

(1665, No. 231.)

XLI.--Those who wish to define victory by her birth

will be tempted to imitate the poets, and to call her

the Daughter of Heaven, since they cannot find her

origin on earth. Truly she is produced from an

infinity of actions, which instead of wishing to beget

her, only look to the particular interests of their

masters, since all those who compose an army, in

aiming at their own rise and glory, produce a good

so great and general. (1665, No. 232.)

XLII.--That man who has never been in danger

cannot answer for his courage. (1665, No. 236.)

XLIII.--We more often place bounds on our grati-

tude than on our desires and our hopes. (1665, No.

241.)

XLIV.--Imitation is always unhappy, for all which

is counterfeit displeases by the very things which

charm us when they are original (NATURELLES). (1665,

No. 245.)

XLV.--We do not regret the loss of our friends ac-

cording to THEIR merits, but according to OUR wants,

and the opinion with which we believed we had im-

pressed them of our worth. (1665, No. 248.)

XLVI.--It is very hard to separate the general

goodness spread all over the world from great clever-

ness. (1665, No. 252.)

XLVII.--For us to be always good, others should

believe that they cannot behave wickedly to us with

impunity. (1665, No. 254.)

XLVIII.--A confidence in being able to please is

often an infallible means of being displeasing. (1665,

No. 256.)

XLIX.--The confidence we have in ourselves arises

in a great measure from that that we have in others.

(1665, No. 258.)

L.--There is a general revolution which changes

the tastes of the mind as well as the fortunes of the

world. (1665, No. 250.)

LI.--Truth is foundation and the reason of the per-

fection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may

be, it cannot be beautiful and perfect unless it be

truly that she should be, and possess truly all that she

should have (1665, No. 260.)

[Beauty is truth, truth beauty.{--John Keats, "Ode on a

a Grecian Urn," (1820), Stanza 5}]

LII.--There are fine things which are more bril-

liant when unfinished than when finished too much.

(1665, No. 262.)

LIII.--Magnanimity is a noble effort of pride which

makes a man master of himself, to make him master

of all things. (1665, No. 271.)

LIV.--Luxury and too refined a policy in states are

a sure presage of their fall, because all parties looking

after their own interest turn away from the public

good. (1665, No. 282.)

LV.--Of all passions that which is least known to

us is idleness; she is the most ardent and evil of all,

although her violence may be insensible, and the evils

she causes concealed; if we consider her power

attentively we shall find that in all encounters she

makes herself mistress of our sentiments, our in-

terests, and our pleasures; like the (fabled) Remora,

she can stop the greatest vessels, she is a hidden rock,

more dangerous in the most important matters than

sudden squalls and the most violent tempests. The

repose of idleness is a magic charm which suddenly

suspends the most ardent pursuits and the most

obstinate resolutions. In fact to give a true notion of

this passion we must add that idleness, like a beati-

tude of the soul, consoles us for all losses and fills the

vacancy of all our wants. (1665, No. 290.)

LVI.--We are very fond of reading others' characters,

but we do not like to be read ourselves. (1665, No. 296.)

LVII.--What a tiresome malady is that which forces

one to preserve your health by a severe regimen.

(IBID, No. 298.)

LVIII.--It is much easier to take love when one is

free, than to get rid of it after having taken it. (1665,

No. 300.)

LIX.--Women for the most part surrender them-

selves more from weakness than from passion. Whence

it is that bold and pushing men succeed better than

others, although they are not so loveable. (1665, No.

301.)

LX.--Not to love is in love, an infallible means of

being beloved. (1665, No. 302.)

LXI.--The sincerity which lovers and mistresses ask

that both should know when they cease to love each

other, arises much less from a wish to be warned of

the cessation of love, than from a desire to be assured

that they are beloved although no one denies it.

(1665, No. 303.)

LXII.--The most just comparison of love is that of

a fever, and we have no power over either, as to its

violence or its duration. (1665, No. 305.)

LXIII.--The greatest skill of the least skilful is to

know how to submit to the direction of another.

(1665, No. 309.)

LXIV.--We always fear to see those whom we love

when we have been flirting with others. (16{74}, No.

372.)

LXV.--We ought to console ourselves for our faults

when we have strength enough to own them. (16{74},

No. 375.)

{The date of the previous two maxims is incorrectly cited

as 1665 in the text. I found this date immediately suspect

because the translators' introduction states that the 1665

edition only had 316 maxims. In fact, the two maxims only

appeared in the fourth of the first five editions (1674).}

SECOND SUPPLEMENT.

REFLECTIONS,

EXTRACTED FROM

MS. LETTERS IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY.*

*<A LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DU ROI, it is difficult at present

(June 1871) to assign a name to the magnificent collection

of books in Paris, the property of the nation.>

LXVI.--Interest is the soul of self-love, in as much

as when the body deprived of its soul is without sight,

feeling or knowledge, without thought or movement,

so self-love, riven so to speak from its interest, neither

sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor moves; thus it is that

the same man who will run over land and sea for his

own interest becomes suddenly paralyzed when en-

gaged for that of others; from this arises that sudden

dulness and, as it were, death, with which we afflict

those to whom we speak of our own matters; from this

also their sudden resurrection when in our narrative

we relate something concerning them; from this we

find in our conversations and business that a man

becomes dull or bright just as his own interest is near

to him or distant from him. (LETTER TO MADAME DE

SABLE, MS., FOL. 211.)

LXVII.--Why we cry out so much against maxims

which lay bare the heart of man, is because we fear

that our own heart shall be laid bare. (MAXIM 103,

MS., fol. 310.*)

*<The reader will recognise in these extracts portions of the

Maxims previously given, sometimes the author has care-

fully polished them; at other times the words are identical.

Our numbers will indicate where they are to be found in

the foregoing collection.>

LXVIII.--Hope and fear are inseparable. (TO

MADAME DE SABLE, MS., FOL. 222, MAX. 168.)

LXIX.--It is a common thing to hazard life to escape

dishonour; but, when this is done, the actor takes

very little pain to make the enterprise succeed in

which he is engaged, and certain it is that they who

hazard their lives to take a city or to conquer a pro-

vince are better officers, have more merit, and wider

and more useful, views than they who merely expose

themselves to vindicate their honour; it is very com-

mon to find people of the latter class, very rare to

find those of the former. (LETTER TO M. ESPRIT, MS.,

FOL. 173, MAX. 219.)

LXX.--The taste changes, but the will remains the

same. (TO MADAME DE SABLE, FOL. 223, MAX. 252.)

LXXI.--The power which women whom we love

have over us is greater than that which we have over

ourselves. (TO THE SAME, MS., FOL. 211, MAX. 259)

LXXII.--That which makes us believe so easily that

others have defects is that we all so easily believe

what we wish. (TO THE SAME, MS., FOL. 223, MAX. 397.)

LXXIII.--I am perfectly aware that good sense and

fine wit are tedious to every age, but tastes are not

always the same, and what is good at one time will

not seem so at another. This makes me think that

few persons know how to be old. (TO THE SAME,

FOL. 202, MAX. 423.)

LXXIV.--God has permitted, to punish man for his

original sin, that he should be so fond of his self-love,

that he should be tormented by it in all the actions

of his life. (MS., FOL. 310, MAX. 494.)

LXXV.--And so far it seems to me the philosophy

of a lacquey can go; I believe that all gaity in that state

of life is very doubtful indeed. (TO MADAME DE SABLE,

FOL. 161, MAX. 504.)

[In the maxim cited the author relates how a footman

about to be broken on the wheel danced on the scaffold.

He seems to think that in his day the life of such servants

was so miserable that their merriment was very doubtful.]

THIRD SUPPLEMENT

[The fifty following Maxims are taken from the Sixth

Edition of the PENSEES DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, published

by Claude Barbin, in 1693, more than twelve years after

the death of the author (17th May, 1680). The reader

will find some repetitions, but also some very valuable

maxims.]

LXXVI.--Many persons wish to be devout; but

no one wishes to be humble.

LXXVII.--The labour of the body frees us from

the pains of the mind, and thus makes the poor happy.

LXXVIII.--True penitential sorrows (mortifica-

tions) are those which are not known, vanity renders

the others easy enough.

LXXIX.--Humility is the altar upon which God

wishes that we should offer him his sacrifices.

LXXX.--Few things are needed to make a wise man

happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why

most men are miserable.

LXXXI.--We trouble ourselves less to become

happy, than to make others believe we are so.

LXXXII.--It is more easy to extinguish the first

desire than to satisfy those which follow.

LXXXIII.--Wisdom is to the soul what health is to

the body.

LXXXIV.--The great ones of the earth can neither

command health of body nor repose of mind, and

they buy always at too dear a price the good they can

acquire.

LXXXV.--Before strongly desiring anything we

should examine what happiness he has who possesses it.

LXXXVI.--A true friend is the greatest of all

goods, and that of which we think least of acquiring.

LXXXVII.--Lovers do not wish to see the faults of

their mistresses until their enchantment is at an end.

LXXXVIII.--Prudence and love are not made for

each other; in the ratio that love increases, prudence

diminishes.

LXXXIX.--It is sometimes pleasing to a husband

to have a jealous wife; he hears her always speaking

of the beloved object.

XC.--How much is a woman to be pitied who is at

the same time possessed of virtue and love!

XCI.--The wise man finds it better not to enter

the encounter than to conquer.

[Somewhat similar to Goldsmith's sage--

"Who quits {a} world where strong temptations try,

And since 'tis hard to co{mbat}, learns to fly."]

XCII.--It is more necessary to study men than

books.

["The proper study of mankind is man."--Pope

{ESSAY ON MAN, (1733), EPISTLE II, line 2}.]

XCIII.--Good and evil ordinarily come to those who

have most of one or the other.

XCIV.--The accent and character of one's native

country dwells in the mind and heart as on the tongue.

(REPITITION OF MAXIM 342.)

XCV.--The greater part of men have qualities

which, like those of plants, are discovered by chance.

(REPITITION OF MAXIM 344.)

XCVI.--A good woman is a hidden treasure; he

who discovers her will do well not to boast about it.

(SEE MAXIM 368.)

XCVII.--Most women do not weep for the loss

of a lover to show that they have been loved so much

as to show that they are worth being loved. (SEE

MAXIM 362.)

XCVIII.--There are many virtuous women who

are weary of the part they have played. (SEE MAXIM

367.)

XCIX.--If we think we love for love's sake we

are much mistaken. (SEE MAXIM 374.)

C.--The restraint we lay upon ourselves to be con-

stant, is not much better than an inconstancy. (SEE

MAXIMS 369, 381.)

CI.--There are those who avoid our jealousy, of

whom we ought to be jealous. (SEE MAXIM 359.)

CII.--Jealousy is always born with love, but does

not always die with it. (SEE MAXIM 361.)

CIII.--When we love too much it is difficult to

discover when we have ceased to be beloved.

CIV.--We know very well that we should not talk

about our wives, but we do not remember that it is

not so well to speak of ourselves. (SEE MAXIM 364.)

CV.--Chance makes us known to others and to our-

selves. (SEE MAXIM 345.)

CVI.--We find very few people of good sense, ex-

cept those who are of our own opinion. (SEE MAXIM

347.)

CVII.--We commonly praise the good hearts of

those who admire us. (SEE MAXIM 356.)

CVIII.--Man only blames himself in order that he

may be praised.

CIX.--Little minds are wounded by the smallest

things. (SEE MAXIM 357.)

CX.--There are certain faults which placed in a good

light please more than perfection itself. (SEE MAXIM

354.)

CXI.--That which makes us so bitter against those

who do us a shrewd turn, is because they think them-

selves more clever than we are. (SEE MAXIM 350.)

CXII.--We are always bored by those whom we

bore. (SEE MAXIM 352.)

CXIII.--The harm that others do us is often less

than that we do ourselves. (SEE MAXIM 363.)

CXIV.--It is never more difficult to speak well

than when we are ashamed of being silent.

CXV.--Those faults are always pardonable that we

have the courage to avow.

CXVI.--The greatest fault of penetration is not

that it goes to the bottom of a matter--but beyond it.

(SEE MAXIM 377.)

CXVII.--We give advice, but we cannot give the

wisdom to profit by it. (SEE MAXIM 378.)

CXVIII.--When our merit declines, our taste de-

clines also. (SEE MAXIM 379.)

CXIX.--Fortune discovers our vices and our vir-

tues, as the light makes objects plain to the sight.

(SEE MAXIM 380.)

CXX.--Our actions are like rhymed verse-ends

(BOUTS-RIMES) which everyone turns as he pleases. (SEE

MAXIM 382.)

CXXI.--There is nothing more natural, nor more

deceptive, than to believe that we are beloved.

CXXII.--We would rather see those to whom we

have done a benefit, than those who have done us one.

CXXIII.--It is more difficult to hide the opinions

we have than to feign those which we have not.

CXXIV.--Renewed friendships require more care

than those that have never been broken.

CXXV.--A man to whom no one is pleasing is

much more unhappy than one who pleases nobody.

REFLECTIONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS,

BY THE

DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

I. On Confidence.

Though sincerity and confidence have many

points of resemblance, they have yet many

points of difference.

Sincerity is an openness of heart, which

shows us what we are, a love of truth, a dis-

like to deception, a wish to compensate our faults and

to lessen them by the merit of confessing them.

Confidence leaves us less liberty, its rules are

stricter, it requires more prudence and reticence, and

we are not always free to give it. It relates not only

to ourselves, since our interests are often mixed up

with those of others; it requires great delicacy not to

expose our friends in exposing ourselves, not to draw

upon their goodness to enhance the value of what we

give.

Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It

is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit

to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon

us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily

submit. I do not wish from what I have said to

depreciate confidence, so necessary to man. It is

in society the link between acquaintance and

friendship. I only wish to state its limits to make

it true and real. I would that it was always sincere,

always discreet, and that it had neither weakness nor

interest. I know it is hard to place proper limits on

being taken into all our friends' confidence, and taking

them into all ours.

Most frequently we make confidants from vanity, a

love of talking, a wish to win the confidence of others,

and make an exchange of secrets.

Some may have a motive for confiding in us, towards

whom we have no motive for confiding. With them we

discharge the obligation in keeping their secrets and

trusting them with small confidences.

Others whose fidelity we know trust nothing to

us, but we confide in them by choice and inclina-

tion.

We should hide from them nothing that concerns

us, we should always show them with equal truth, our

virtues and our vices, without exaggerating the one

or diminishing the other. We should make it a rule

never to have half confidences. They always embarrass

those who give them, and dissatisfy those who receive

them. They shed an uncertain light on what we want

hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to

know more, giving them leave to consider themselves

free to talk of what they have guessed. It is far

safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be

silent when we have begun to tell. There are other

rules to be observed in matters confided to us, all are

important, to all prudence and trust are essential.

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact,

but everyone does not agree as to the nature and

importance of secresy. Too often we consult our-

selves as to what we should say, what we should leave

unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the

scruple against revealing them will not last for ever.

With those friends whose truth we know we have

the closest intimacy. They have always spoken unre-

servedly to us, we should always do the same to them.

They know our habits and connexions, and see too

clearly not to perceive the slightest change. They

may have elsewhere learnt what we have promised not

to tell. It is not in our power to tell them what has

been entrusted to us, though it might tend to their

interest to know it. We feel as confident of them

as of ourselves, and we are reduced to the hard fate of

losing their friendship, which is dear to us, or of being

faithless as regards a secret. This is doubtless the

hardest test of fidelity, but it should not move an

honest man; it is then that he can sacrifice himself

to others. His first duty is to rigidly keep his trust

in its entirety. He should not only control and

guard his and his voice, but even his lighter

talk, so that nothing be seen in his conversation or

manner that could direct the curiosity of others towards

that which he wishes to conceal.

We have often need of strength and prudence

wherewith to oppose the exigencies of most of our

friends who make a claim on our confidence, and

seek to know all about us. We should never allow

them to acquire this unexceptionable right. There

are accidents and circumstances which do not fall in

their cognizance; if they complain, we should endure

their complaints and excuse ourselves with gentleness,

but if they are still unreasonable, we should sacrifice

their friendship to our duty, and choose between two

inevitable evils, the one reparable, the other irre-

parable.

II. On Difference of Character.

Although all the qualities of mind may be united in

a great genius, yet there are some which are special

and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he

always acts uniformly and with the same activity;

he sees distant objects as if present; he compre-

hends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the

smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad,

just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation,

and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that

hides her from others.

A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates

vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in

their best light, clothes them with all appropriate

adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away

from its own thoughts all that is useless and dis-

agreeable.

A clever, pliant, winning mind knows how to avoid

and overcome difficulties. Bending easily to what it

wants, it understands the inclination and temper it is

dealing with, and by managing their interests it

advances and establishes its own.

A well regulated mind sees all things as they should

be seen, appraises them at their proper value, turns

them to its own advantage, and adheres firmly to its

own opinions as it knows all their force and weight.

A difference exists between a working mind and a

business-like mind. We can undertake business with-

out turning it to our own interest. Some are clever

only in what does not concern them, and the reverse

in all that does. There are others again whose

cleverness is limited to their own business, and who

know how to turn everything to their own advantage.

It is possible to have a serious turn of mind, and

yet to talk pleasantly and cheerfully. This class of

mind is suited to all persons in all times of life.

Young persons have usually a cheerful and satirical

turn, untempered by seriousness, thus often making

themselves disagreeable.

No part is easier to play than that of being always

pleasant; and the applause we sometimes receive in

censuring others is not worth being exposed to the

chance of offending them when they are out of

temper.

Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dan-

gerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it

is refined, but we always fear those who use it too

much, yet satire should be allowed when unmixed

with spite, and when the person satirised can join in

the satire.

It is unfortunate to have a satirical turn without

affecting to be pleased or without loving to jest. It

requires much adroitness to continue satirical with-

out falling into one of these extremes.

Raillery is a kind of mirth which takes possession

of the imagination, and shows every object in an

absurd light; wit combines more or less softness or

harshness.

There is a kind of refined and flattering raillery that

only hits the faults that persons admit, which under-

stands how to hide the praise it gives under the ap-

pearance of blame, and shows the good while feigning

a wish to hide it.

An acute mind and a cunning mind are very dis-

similar. The first always pleases; it is unfettered, it

perceives the most delicate and sees the most impercep-

tible matters. A cunning spirit never goes straight, it

endeavours to secure its object by byeways and short

cuts. This conduct is soon found out, it always gives

rise to distrust and never reaches greatness.

There is a difference between an ardent and a

brilliant mind, a fiery spirit travels further and faster,

while a brilliant mind is sparkling, attractive, accu-

rate.

Gentleness of mind is an easy and accommodating

manner which always pleases when not insipid.

A mind full of details devotes itself to the manage-

ment and regulation of the smallest particulars it

meets with. This distinction is usually limited to

little matters, yet it is not absolutely incompatible

with greatness, and when these two qualities are

united in the same mind they raise it infinitely above

others.

The expression "BEL ESPRIT" is much perverted, for

all that one can say of the different kinds of mind

meet together in the "BEL ESPRIT." Yet as the epithet

is bestowed on an infinite number of bad poets and

tedious authors, it is more often used to ridicule than

to praise.

There are yet many other epithets for the mind

which mean the same thing, the difference lies in the

tone and manner of saying them, but as tones and

manner cannot appear in writing I shall not go into

distinctions I cannot explain. Custom explains this

in saying that a man has wit, has much wit, that he

is a great wit; there are tones and manners which

make all the difference between phrases which seem

all alike on paper, and yet express a different order of

mind.

So we say that a man has only one kind of wit, that

he has several, that he has every variety of wit.

One can be a fool with much wit, and one need not

be a fool even with very little wit.

To have much mind is a doubtful expression. It

may mean every class of mind that can be mentioned,

it may mean none in particular. It may mean that

he talks sensibly while he acts foolishly. We may

have a mind, but a narrow one. A mind may be

fitted for some things, not for others. We may have

a large measure of mind fitted for nothing, and one is

often inconvenienced with much mind; still of this

kind of mind we may say that it is sometimes pleasing

in society.

Though the gifts of the mind are infinite, they can,

it seems to me, be thus classified.

There are some so beautiful that everyone can see

and feel their beauty.

There are some lovely, it is true, but which are

wearisome.

There are some which are lovely, which all the

world admire, but without knowing why.

There are some so refined and delicate that few are

capable even of remarking all their beauties.

There are others which, though imperfect, yet are

produced with such skill, and sustained and managed

with such sense and grace, that they even deserve to

be admired.

III. On Taste.

Some persons have more wit than taste, others have

more taste than wit. There is greater vanity and

caprice in taste than in wit.

The word taste has different meanings, which it is

easy to mistake. There is a difference between the

taste which in certain objects has an attraction for

us, and the taste that makes us understand and

distinguish the qualities we judge by.

We may like a comedy without having a sufficiently

fine and delicate taste to criticise it accurately. Some

tastes lead us imperceptibly to objects, from which

others carry us away by their force or intensity.

Some persons have bad taste in everything, others

have bad taste only in some things, but a correct and

good taste in matters within their capacity. Some

have peculiar taste, which they know to be bad, but

which they still follow. Some have a doubtful taste,

and let chance decide, their indecision makes them

change, and they are affected with pleasure or weari-

ness on their friends' judgment. Others are always

prejudiced, they are the slaves of their tastes, which

they adhere to in everything. Some know what is

good, and are horrified at what is not; their opinions

are clear and true, and they find the reason for their

taste in their mind and understanding.

Some have a species of instinct (the source of which

they are ignorant of), and decide all questions that

come before them by its aid, and always decide

rightly.

These follow their taste more than their intelligence,

because they do not permit their temper and self-love

to prevail over their natural discernment. All they

do is in harmony, all is in the same spirit. This

harmony makes them decide correctly on matters, and

form a correct estimate of their value. But speaking

generally there are few who have a taste fixed and

independent of that of their friends, they follow

example and fashion which generally form the stand-

ard of taste.

In all the diversities of taste that we discern, it is

very rare and almost impossible to meet with that sort

of good taste that knows how to set a price on the

particular, and yet understands the right value that

should be placed on all. Our knowledge is too limited,

and that correct discernment of good qualities which

goes to form a correct judgment is too seldom to be

met with except in regard to matters that do not

concern us.

As regards ourselves our taste has not this all-

important discernment. Preoccupation, trouble, all

that concern us, present it to us in another aspect.

We do not see with the same eyes what does and

what does not relate to us. Our taste is guided by

the bent of our self-love and temper, which supplies

us with new views which we adapt to an infinite

number of changes and uncertainties. Our taste is

no longer our own, we cease to control it, without our

consent it changes, and the same objects appear to us

in such divers aspects that ultimately we fail to per-

ceive what we have seen and heard.

IV. On Society.

In speaking of society my plan is not to speak of

friendship, for, though they have some connection,

they are yet very different. The former has more

in it of greatness and humility, and the greatest

merit of the latter is to resemble the former.

For the present I shall speak of that particular

kind of intercourse that gentlemen should have with

each other. It would be idle to show how far society

is essential to men: all seek for it, and all find it, but

few adopt the method of making it pleasant and

lasting.

Everyone seeks to find his pleasure and his advan-

tage at the expense of others. We prefer ourselves

always to those with whom we intend to live, and

they almost always perceive the preference. It is

this which disturbs and destroys society. We should

discover a means to hide this love of selection since it

is too ingrained in us to be in our power to destroy.

We should make our pleasure that of other persons, to

humour, never to wound their self-love.

The mind has a great part to do in so great a work,

but it is not merely sufficient for us to guide it in the

different courses it should hold.

The agreement we meet between minds would not

keep society together for long if she was not governed

and sustained by good sense, temper, and by the con-

sideration which ought to exist between persons who

have to live together.

It sometimes happens that persons opposite in tem-

per and mind become united. They doubtless hold

together for different reasons, which cannot last for

long. Society may subsist between those who are our

inferiors by birth or by personal qualities, but those

who have these advantages should not abuse them.

They should seldom let it be perceived that they

serve to instruct others. They should let their con-

duct show that they, too, have need to be guided and

led by reason, and accommodate themselves as far as

possible to the feeling and the interests of the others.

To make society pleasant, it is essential that each

should retain his freedom of action. A man should

not see himself, or he should see himself without

dependence, and at the same time amuse himself. He

should have the power of separating himself without

that separation bringing any change on the society.

He should have the power to pass by one and the

other, if he does not wish to expose himself to occa-

sional embarrassments; and he should remember that

he is often bored when he believes he has not the

power even to bore. He should share in what he

believes to be the amusement of persons with whom

he wishes to live, but he should not always be liable

to the trouble of providing them.

Complaisance is essential in society, but it should

have its limits, it becomes a slavery when it is extreme.

We should so render a free consent, that in following

the opinion of our friends they should believe that they

follow ours.

We should readily excuse our friends when their

faults are born with them, and they are less than

their good qualities. We should often avoid to show

what they have said, and what they have left unsaid.

We should try to make them perceive their faults, so

as to give them the merit of correcting them.

There is a kind of politeness which is necessary in

the intercourse among gentlemen, it makes them

comprehend badinage, and it keeps them from using

and employing certain figures of speech, too rude and

unrefined, which are often used thoughtlessly when

we hold to our opinion with too much warmth.

The intercourse of gentlemen cannot subsist without

a certain kind of confidence; this should be equal on

both sides. Each should have an appearance of

sincerity and of discretion which never causes the

fear of anything imprudent being said.

There should be some variety in wit. Those who

have only one kind of wit cannot please for long

unless they can take different roads, and not both use

the same talents, thus adding to the pleasure of

society, and keeping the same harmony that different

voices and different instruments should observe in

music; and as it is detrimental to the quiet of society,

that many persons should have the same interests,

it is yet as necessary for it that their interests should

not be different.

We should anticipate what can please our friends,

find out how to be useful to them so as to exempt them

from annoyance, and when we cannot avert evils,

seem to participate in them, insensibly obliterate

without attempting to destroy them at a blow, and

place agreeable objects in their place, or at least such

as will interest them. We should talk of subjects

that concern them, but only so far as they like, and

we should take great care where we draw the line.

There is a species of politeness, and we may say a

similar species of humanity, which does not enter too

quickly into the recesses of the heart. It often takes

pains to allow us to see all that our friends know,

while they have still the advantage of not knowing

to the full when we have penetrated the depth of the

heart.

Thus the intercourse between gentlemen at once

gives them familiarity and furnishes them with an

infinite number of subjects on which to talk freely.

Few persons have sufficient tact and good sense

fairly to appreciate many matters that are essential

to maintain society. We desire to turn away at a

certain point, but we do not want to be mixed up

in everything, and we fear to know all kinds of

truth.

As we should stand at a certain distance to view

objects, so we should also stand at a distance to observe

society; each has its proper point of view from which

it should be regarded. It is quite right that it

should not be looked at too closely, for there is hardly

a man who in all matters allows himself to be seen as

he really is.

V. On Conversation.

The reason why so few persons are agreeable in con-

versation is that each thinks more of what he desires

to say, than of what the others say, and that we

make bad listeners when we want to speak.

Yet it is necessary to listen to those who talk, we

should give them the time they want, and let them say

even senseless things; never contradict or interrupt

them; on the contrary, we should enter into their mind

and taste, illustrate their meaning, praise anything

they say that deserves praise, and let them see we

praise more from our choice than from agreement

with them.

To please others we should talk on subjects they

like and that interest them, avoid disputes upon in-

different matters, seldom ask questions, and never let

them see that we pretend to be better informed than

they are.

We should talk in a more or less serious manner,

and upon more or less abstruse subjects, according to

the temper and understanding of the persons we talk

with, and readily give them the advantage of deciding

without obliging them to answer when they are not

anxious to talk.

After having in this way fulfilled the duties of

politeness, we can speak our opinions to our listeners

when we find an opportunity without a sign of pre-

sumption or opinionatedness. Above all things we

should avoid often talking of ourselves and giving

ourselves as an example; nothing is more tiresome

than a man who quotes himself for everything.

We cannot give too great study to find out the

manner and the capacity of those with whom we talk,

so as to join in the conversation of those who have

more than ourselves without hurting by this prefer-

ence the wishes or interests of others.

Then we should modestly use all the modes above-

mentioned to show our thoughts to them, and make

them, if possible, believe that we take our ideas from

them.

We should never say anything with an air of

authority, nor show any superiority of mind. We

should avoid far-fetched expressions, expressions hard

or forced, and never let the words be grander than

the matter.

It is not wrong to retain our opinions if they are

reasonable, but we should yield to reason, wherever

she appears and from whatever side she comes, she

alone should govern our opinions, we should follow

her without opposing the opinions of others, and

without seeming to ignore what they say.

It is dangerous to seek to be always the leader of the

conversation, and to push a good argument too hard,

when we have found one. Civility often hides half its

understanding, and when it meets with an opinionated

man who defends the bad side, spares him the disgrace

of giving way.

We are sure to displease when we speak too long

and too often of one subject, and when we try to turn

the conversation upon subjects that we think more

instructive than others, we should enter indifferently

upon every subject that is agreeable to others, stop-

ping where they wish, and avoiding all they do not

agree with.

Every kind of conversation, however witty it may

be, is not equally fitted for all clever persons; we

should select what is to their taste and suitable to

their condition, their sex, their talents, and also choose

the time to say it.

We should observe the place, the occasion, the

temper in which we find the person who listens to us,

for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose,

there is no less in knowing when to be silent. There

is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to

condemn, there is a silence of discretion and of respect.

In a word, there is a tone, an air, a manner, which

renders everything in conversation agreeable or dis-

agreeable, refined or vulgar.

But it is given to few persons to keep this secret

well. Those who lay down rules too often break

them, and the safest we are able to give is to listen

much, to speak little, and to say nothing that will ever

give ground for regret.

VI. Falsehood.

We are false in different ways. There are some

men who are false from wishing always to appear what

they are not. There are some who have better faith,

who are born false, who deceive themselves, and who

never see themselves as they really are; to some is

given a true understanding and a false taste, others

have a false understanding and some correctness in

taste; there are some who have not any falsity

either in taste or mind. These last are very rare, for

to speak generally, there is no one who has not some

falseness in some corner of his mind or his taste.

What makes this falseness so universal, is that as

our qualities are uncertain and confused, so too, are

our tastes; we do not see things exactly as they are,

we value them more or less than they are worth, and

do not bring them into unison with ourselves in a

manner which suits them or suits our condition or

qualities.

This mistake gives rise to an infinite number of

falsities in the taste and in the mind. Our self-love

is flattered by all that presents itself to us under the

guise of good.

But as there are many kinds of good which affect

our vanity and our temper, so they are often followed

from custom or advantage. We follow because the

others follow, without considering that the same feeling

ought not to be equally embarrassing to all kinds of

persons, and that it should attach itself more or less

firmly, according as persons agree more or less with

those who follow them.

We dread still more to show falseness in taste than

in mind. Gentleness should approve without preju-

dice what deserves to be approved, follow what

deserves to be followed, and take offence at nothing.

But there should be great distinction and great

accuracy. We should distinguish between what is

good in the abstract and what is good for ourselves,

and always follow in reason the natural inclination

which carries us towards matters that please us.

If men only wished to excel by the help of their

own talents, and in following their duty, there would

be nothing false in their taste or in their conduct.

They would show what they were, they would judge

matters by their lights, and they would attract by their

reason. There would be a discernment in their views,

in their sentiments, their taste would be true, it would

come to them direct, and not from others, they would

follow from choice and not from habit or chance. If

we are false in admiring what should not be admired,

it is oftener from envy that we affix a value to

qualities which are good in themselves, but which do

not become us. A magistrate is false when he flatters

himself he is brave, and that he will be able to be bold

in certain cases. He should be as firm and stedfast

in a plot which ought to be stifled without fear of

being false, as he would be false and absurd in fighting

a duel about it.

A woman may like science, but all sciences are not

suitable for her, and the doctrines of certain sciences

never become her, and when applied by her are always

false.

We should allow reason and good sense to fix the

value of things, they should determine our taste

and give things the merit they deserve, and the im-

portance it is fitting we should give them. But

nearly all men are deceived in the price and in the

value, and in these mistakes there is always a kind of

falseness.

VII. On Air and Manner.

There is an air which belongs to the figure and

talents of each individual; we always lose it when

we abandon it to assume another.

We should try to find out what air is natural to us

and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can.

This is the reason that the majority of children please.

It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner

nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other.

They are changed and corrupted when they quit

infancy, they think they should imitate what they

see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In

this imitation there is always something of falsity and

uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their man-

ner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what

they want to appear, they seek to appear what they

are not.

All men want to be different, and to be greater than

they are; they seek for an air other than their own,

and a mind different from what they possess; they

take their style and manner at chance. They make

experiments upon themselves without considering

that what suits one person will not suit everyone,

that there is no universal rule for taste or manners,

and that there are no good copies.

Few men, nevertheless, can have unison in many

matters without being a copy of each other, if each

follow his natural turn of mind. But in general a

person will not wholly follow it. He loves to imitate.

We often imitate the same person without perceiving

it, and we neglect our own good qualities for the good

qualities of others, which generally do not suit us.

I do not pretend, from what I say, that each should

so wrap himself up in himself as not to be able

to follow example, or to add to his own, useful and

serviceable habits, which nature has not given him.

Arts and sciences may be proper for the greater part

of those who are capable for them. Good manners and

politeness are proper for all the world. But, yet

acquired qualities should always have a certain agree-

ment and a certain union with our own natural

qualities, which they imperceptibly extend and in-

crease. We are elevated to a rank and dignity above

ourselves. We are often engaged in a new profession

for which nature has not adapted us. All these con-

ditions have each an air which belong to them, but

which does not always agree with our natural manner.

This change of our fortune often changes our air and

our manners, and augments the air of dignity, which

is always false when it is too marked, and when it is

not united and amalgamated with that which nature

has given us. We should unite and blend them to-

gether, and thus render them such that they can

never be separated.

We should not speak of all subjects in one

tone and in the same manner. We do not march

at the head of a regiment as we walk on a pro-

menade; and we should use the same style in which

we should naturally speak of different things in the

same way, with the same difference as we should walk,

but always naturally, and as is suitable, either at

the head of a regiment or on a promenade. There

are some who are not content to abandon the air and

manner natural to them to assume those of the rank

and dignities to which they have arrived. There are

some who assume prematurely the air of the dignities

and rank to which they aspire. How many lieutenant-

generals assume to be marshals of France, how many

barristers vainly repeat the style of the Chancellor

and how many female citizens give themselves the

airs of duchesses.

But what we are most often vexed at is that no one

knows how to conform his air and manners with his

appearance, nor his style and words with his thoughts

and sentiments, that every one forgets himself and how

far he is insensibly removed from the truth. Nearly

every one falls into this fault in some way. No one

has an ear sufficiently fine to mark perfectly this kind

of cadence.

Thousands of people with good qualities are dis-

pleasing; thousands pleasing with far less abilities,

and why? Because the first wish to appear to be what

they are not, the second are what they appear.

Some of the advantages or disadvantages that we

have received from nature please in proportion as

we know the air, the style, the manner, the senti-

ments that coincide with our condition and our

appearance, and displease in the proportion they are

removed from that point.

INDEX

THE LETTER R PRECEDING A REFERENCE REFERS TO THE REFLECTIONS,

THE ROMAN NUMERALS REFER TO THE SUPPLEMENTS.

Ability, 162, 165, 199, 245, 283, 288. SEE Cleverness

-------, Sovereign, 244.

Absence, 276.

Accent, country, 342, XCIV.

Accidents, 59, 310.

Acquaintances, 426. SEE FRIENDS.

Acknowledgements, 225.

Actions, 1, 7, 57, 58, 160, 161, 382, 409, CXX.

Actors, 256.

Admiration, 178, 294, 474.

Adroitness of mind, R.2.

Adversity, 25.

--------- of Friends, XV.

Advice, 110, 116, 283, 378, CXVII.

Affairs, 453, R 2.

Affectation, 134, 493.

Affections, 232.

Afflictions, 233, 355, 362, 493, XCVII, XV.

Age, 222, 405, LXXIII. SEE Old Age.

Agreeableness, 255, R.5.

Agreement, 240.

Air, 399, 495, R.7.

--- Of a Citizen, 393.

Ambition, 24, 91, 246, 293, 490.

Anger, XXX.

Application, 41, 243.

Appearances, 64, 166, 199, 256, 302, 431, 457, R.7.

-----------, Conformity of Manners with, R.7.

Applause, 272.

Approbation, 51, 280.

Artifices, 117, 124, 125, 126, R.2.

Astonishment, 384.

Avarice, 167, 491, 492.

Ballads, 211.

Beauty, 240, 474, 497, LI.

------ of the Mind, R.2.

Bel esprit defined, R.2.

Benefits, 14, 298, 299, 301, CXXII.

Benefactors, 96, 317, CXXII.

Blame, CVIII.

Blindness, XIX.

Boasting, 141, 307.

Boredom, 141, 304, 352. SEE Ennui.

Bouts rimes, 382, CXX.

Bravery, 1, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221, 365,

504. SEE Courage and Valour.

Brilliancy of Mind, R.2.

Brilliant things, LII.

Capacity, 375.

Caprice, 45.

Chance, 57, 344, XCV. SEE Fortune.

Character, LVI, R.2.

Chastity, 1. SEE Virtue of Women.

Cheating, 114, 127.

Circumstances, 59, 470.

Civility, 260.

Clemency, 15, 16.

Cleverness, 162, 269, 245, 399.

Coarseness, 372.

Comedy, 211, R.3.

Compassion, 463. SEE Pity.

Complaisance, 481, R.4.

Conduct, 163, 227, 378, CXVII.

Confidants, whom we make, R.1.

Confidence, 239, 365, 475, XLIX, R.1, R.4.

Confidence, difference from Sincerity

----------, defined, R.1.

Consolation, 325.

Constancy, 19, 20, 21, 175, 176, 420.

Contempt, 322.

-------- of Death, 504.

Contentment, LXXX.

Contradictions, 478.

Conversation, 139, 140, 142, 312, 313, 314, 364, 391,

421, CIV, R.5.

Copies, 133.

Coquetry, 241. SEE Flirtation.

Country Manner, 393.

------- Accent, 342.

Courage, 1, 214, 215, 216, 219, 221, XLII. SEE Bravery.

Covetousness, opposed to Reason, 469

Cowardice, 215, 480.

Cowards, 370.

Crimes, 183, 465, XXXV, XXXVII.

Cunning, 126, 129, 394, 407.

Curiosity, 173.

Danger, XLII.

Death, 21, 23, 26.

-----, Contempt of, 504.

Deceit, 86, 117, 118, 124, 127, 129, 395, 434. SEE ALSO

Self-Deceit.

Deception, CXXI.

Decency, 447.

Defects, 31, 90, 493, LXXII. SEE Faults.

Delicacy, 128, R.2.

Dependency, result of Confidence, R.1.

Designs, 160, 161.

Desires, 439, 469, LXXXII, LXXXV.

Despicable Persons, 322.

Detail, Mind given to, R.2.

Details, 41, 106.

Devotion, 427.

Devotees, 427.

Devout, LXXVI.

Differences, 135.

Dignities, R.7.

Discretion, R.5.

Disguise, 119, 246, 282.

Disgrace, 235, 412.

Dishonour, 326, LXIX.

Distrust, 84, 86, 335.

Divination, 425.

Doubt, 348.

Docility, R.4.

Dupes, 87, 102.

Education, 261.

Elevation, 399, 400, 403.

Eloquence, 8, 249, 250.

Employments, 164, 419, 449.

Enemies, 114, 397, 458, 463.

Ennui, 122, 141, 304, 312, 352, CXII, R.2.

Envy, 27, 28, 280, 281, 328, 376, 433, 476, 486.

Epithets assigned to the Mind, R.2.

Esteem, 296.

Establish, 56, 280.

Evils, 121, 197, 269, 454, 464, XCIII.

Example, 230.

Exchange of secrets, R.1.

Experience, 405.

Expedients, 287.

Expression, refined, R.5.

Faculties of the Mind, 174.

Failings, 397, 403.

Falseness, R.6.

---------, disguised, 282.

---------, kinds of, R.6.

Familiarity, R,4.

Fame, 157.

Farces, men compared to, 211.

Faults, 37, 112, 155, 184, 190, 194, 196, 251, 354, 365,

372, 397, 403, 411, 428, 493, 494, V, LXV, CX,

CXV.

Favourites, 55.

Fear, 370, LXVIII.

Feeling, 255.

Ferocity, XXXIII.

Fickleness, 179, 181, 498.

Fidelity, 247.

--------, hardest test of, R.1.

-------- in love, 331, 381, C.

Figure and air, R.7.

Firmness, 19, 479.

Flattery, 123, 144, 152, 198, 320, 329.

Flirts, 406, 418.

Flirtation, 107, 241, 277, 332, 334, 349, 376, LXIV.

Follies, 156, 300, 408, 416.

Folly, 207, 208, 209, 210, 231, 300, 310, 311, 318,

XXIV.

Fools, 140, 210, 309, 318, 357, 414, 451, 456,

-----, old, 444.

-----, witty, 451, 456.

Force of Mind, 30, 42,

, 237.

Forgetfulness, XXVI.

Forgiveness, 330.

Fortitude, 19. SEE Bravery.

Fortune, 1, 17, 45, 52, 53, 58, 60, 61, 154, 212, 227, 323,

343, 380, 391, 392, 399, 403, 435, 449, IX., CXIX.

Friends, 84, 114, 179, 235, 279, 315, 319, 428.

-------, adversity of, XV.

-------, disgrace of, 235.

-------, faults of, 428.

-------, true ones, LXXXVI.

Friendship, 80, 81, 83, 376, 410, 427, 440, 441, 473,

XXII, CXXIV.

----------, defined, 83.

----------, women do not care for, 440.

----------, rarer than love, 473.

Funerals, XXXVIII.

Gallantry, 100. SEE Flirtation.

--------- of mind, 100.

Generosity, 246.

Genius, R.2.

Gentleness, R.6.

Ghosts, 76.

Gifts of the mind, R.2.

Glory, 157, 198, 221, 268.

Good, 121, 185, 229, 238, 303, XCIII.

----, how to be, XLVII.

Goodness, 237, 275, 284, XLVI.

Good grace, 67, R.7.

Good man, who is a, 206.

God nature, 481.

Good qualities, 29, 90, 337, 365, 397, 462.

Good sense, 67, 347, CVI.

Good taste, 258.

----------, rarity of, R.3.

----, women, 368, XCVI.

Government of others, 151.

Grace, 67.

Gracefulness, 240.

Gratitude, 223, 224, 225, 279, 298, 438, XLIII.

Gravity, 257.

Great men, what they cannot acquire, LXXXIV.

Great minds, 142.

Great names, 94.

Greediness, 66.

Habit, 426.

Happy, who are, 49.

Happiness, 48, 61, VII, LXXX, LXXXI.

hatred, 338.

Head, 102, 108.

Health, 188, LVII.

Heart, 98, 102, 103, 108, 478, 484.

Heroes, 24, 53, 185.

Honesty, 202, 206.

Honour, 270.

Hope, 168, LXVIII.

Humility, 254, 358, LXXVI, LXXIX

Humiliation, 272.

Humour, 47. SEE Temper.

Hypocrisy, 218.

--------- of afflictions, 233.

Idleness, 169, 266, 267, 398, 482, 487, XVIII., LV.

Ills, 174. SEE Evils.

Illusions, 123.

Imagination, 478.

Imitation, 230, XLIV, R.5.

Impertinence, 502.

Impossibilities, 30.

Incapacity, 126.

Inclination, 253, 390.

Inconsistency, 135.

Inconstancy, 181.

Inconvenience, 242.

Indifference, 172, XXIII.

Indiscretion, 429.

Indolence. SEE Idleness, and Laziness.

Infidelity, 359, 360, 381, 429.

Ingratitude, 96, 226, 306, 317.

Injuries, 14.

Injustice, 78.

Innocence, 465.

Instinct, 123.

Integrity, 170.

Interest, 39, 40, 66, 85, 172, 187, 232, 253, 305, 390.

Interests, 66.

Intrepidity, 217, XL.

Intrigue, 73.

Invention, 287.

Jealousy, 28, 32, 324, 336, 359, 361, 446, 503, CII.

Joy, XIV.

Judges, 268.

Judgment, 89, 97, 248.

-------- of the World, 212, 455.

Justice, 78, 458, XII.

Kindness, 14, 85.

Knowledge, 106.

Labour of Body, effect of, LXXVII.

Laments, 355.

Laziness, 367. SEE Idleness.

Leader, 43.

Levity, 179, 181.

Liberality, 167, 263.

Liberty in Society, R.4.

Limits to Confidence, R.1.

Little Minds, 142.

Love, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 136, 259, 262,

274, 286, 296, 321, 335, 336, 348, 349, 351, 353,

361, 371, 374, 385, 395, 396, 402, 417, 418, 422,

430, 440, 441, 459, 466, 471, 473, 499, 500, 501,

x, XI, XIII, LVIII, LX, LXII, LXXXVIII,

XCIX, CIII, CXXI.

---- defined, 68.

----, Coldness in, LX.

----, Effect of absence on, 276.

---- akin to Hate, 111.

---- of Women, 466, 471, 499.

----, Novelty in, 274.

----, Infidelity in, LXIV.

----, Old age of, 430.

----, Cure for, 417, 459.

Loss of Friends, XLV.

Lovers, 312, 362, LXXXVII, XCVII.

Lunatic, 353.

Luxury, LIV.

Lying, 63.

Madmen, 353, 414.

Malady, LVII.

Magistrates, R.6.

Magnanimity, 248, LIII.

----------- defined, 285.

Malice, 483.

Manners, R.7.

Mankind, 436, XXXVI.

Marriages, 113.

Maxims, LXVII.

Mediocrity, 375.

Memory, 89, 313.

Men easier to know than Man, 436.

Merit, 50, 92, 95, 153, 156, 165, 166, 273, 291, 379,

401, 437, 455, CXVIII.

Mind, 101, 103, 265, 357, 448, 482, CIX.

Mind, Capacities of, R.2.

Miserable, 49.

Misfortunes, 19, 24, 174, 325.

----------- of Friends. XV.

----------- of Enemies, 463.

Mistaken people, 386.

Mistrust, 86.

Mockery, R.2.

Moderation, 17, 18, 293, 308, III, IV.

Money, Man compared to, XXXII.

Motives, 409.

Names, Great, 94.

Natural goodness, 275.

Natural, to be, 431.

-------, always pleasing, R.7.

Nature, 53, 153, 189, 365, 404.

Negotiations, 278.

Novelty in study, 178.

------- in love, 274.

------- in friendship, 426.

Obligations, 299, 317, 438. SEE Benefits and Gratitude.

Obstinacy, 234, 424.

--------- its cause, 265.

Occasions. SEE Opportunities.

Old Age, 109, 210, 418, 423, 430, 461.

Old Men, 93.

Openness of heart, R.1.

Opinions, 13, 234, CXXIII, R.5.

Opinionatedness, R.5.

Opportunities, 345, 453, CV.

Passions, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 122, 188, 266, 276, 404,

422, 443, 460, 471, 477, 484, 485, 486, 500, II.

Peace of Mind, VIII.

Penetration, 377, 425, CXVI.

Perfection, R.2.

Perseverance, 177.

Perspective, 104.

Persuasion, 8.

Philosophers, 46, 54, 504, XXI.

Philosophy, 22.

---------- of a Footman, 504, LXXV.

Pity, 264.

Pleasing, 413, CXXV.

--------, Mode of, XLVIII, R.5.

--------, Mind a, R.2.

Point of view, R.4.

Politeness, 372, R.5.

Politeness of Mind, 99.

Praise, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 272, 356,

432, XXVII, CVII.

Preoccupation, 92, R.3.

Pride, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 228, 234, 239, 254, 267, 281,

450, 462, 463, 472, VI, XIX.

Princes, 15, 320.

Proceedings, 170.

Productions of the Mind, R.2.

Professions, 256.

Promises, 38.

Proportion, R.6.

Propriety, 447.

--------- in Women, XXXIV.

Prosperity, 25.

Providence, XXXIX.

Prudence, 65, LXXXVIII, R.1.

Qualities, 29, 162, 397, 470, 498, R.6, R.7.

---------, Bad, 468.

---------, Good, 88, 337, 462.

---------, Great, 159, 433.

---------, of Mind, classified, R.20.

Quarrels, 496,

Quoting oneself, R.5.

Raillery, R.2, R.4.

Rank, 401.

Reason, 42, 105, 325, 365, 467, 469, XX, R.6.

Recollection in Memory{, 313}.

Reconciliation, 82.

Refinement, R.2.

Regret, 355.

Relapses, 193.

Remedies, 288.

-------- for love 459.

Remonstrances, 37.

Repentance, 180.

Repose, 268.

Reproaches, 148.

Reputation, 268, 412.

Resolution, L.

Revenge, 14.

Riches, 54.

Ridicule, 133, 134, 326, 418, 422.

Rules for Conversation, R.5.

Rusticity, 393.

Satire, 483, R.2, R.4.

Sciences, R.6.

Secrets, XVI, R.1.

-------, How they should be kept, R.1.

Self-deceit, 115, 452.

Self-love, 2, 3, 4, 228, 236, 247, 261, 262, 339, 494, 500,

I, XVII, XXVIII, XXXIII, LXVI, LXXIV.

--------- in love, 262.

Self-satisfaction, 51.

Sensibility, 275.

Sensible People, 347, CVI.

Sentiment, 255, R.6.

Severity of Women, 204, 333.

Shame, 213, 220.

Silence, 79, 137, 138, CXIV.

Silliness. SEE Folly.

Simplicity, 289.

Sincerity, 62, 316, 366, 383, 457.

---------, Difference between it and Confidence, R.1.

---------, defined, R.1.

--------- of Lovers, LXI.

Skill, LXIV.

Sobriety, XXV.

Society, 87, 201, R.4.

-------, Distinction between it and Friendship, R.IV.

Soul, 80, 188, 194.

Souls, Great, XXXI.

Sorrows, LXXVIII.

Stages of Life, 405.

Strength of mind, 19, 20, 21, 504.

Studies, why new ones are pleasing, 178.

-------, what to study, XCII.

Subtilty, 128.

Sun, 26.

Talents, 468.

-------, latent, 344, XCV.

Talkativeness, 314.

Taste, 13, 109, 252, 390, 467, CXX, R.3, R.6.

-----, good, 258, R.3.

-----, cause of diversities in, R.3.

-----, false, R.3.

Tears, 233, 373.

Temper, 47, 290, 292.

Temperament, 220, 222, 297, 346.

Times for speaking, R.5.

Timidity, 169, 480.

Titles, XXXII.

Tranquillity, 488.

Treachery, 120, 126.

Treason, 120.

Trickery, 86, 350, XCI. SEE Deceit.

Trifles, 41.

Truth, 64, LI.

Tyranny, R.1.

Understanding, 89.

Untruth, 63. SEE Lying.

Unhappy, CXXV.

Valour, 1, 213, 214, 215, 216. SEE Bravery and Courage.

Vanity, 137, 158, 200, 232, 388, 389, 443, 467, 483.

Variety of mind, R.4.

Vice, 182, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 195, 218, 253, 273,

380, 442, 445, XXIX.

Violence, 363, 369, 466, CXIII.

Victory, XII.

Virtue, 1, 25, 169, 171, 182, 186, 187, 189, 200, 218,

253, 380, 388, 442, 445, 489, XXIX.

Virtue of Women, 1, 220, 367, XCVIII.

Vivacity, 416.

Weakness, 130, 445.

Wealth, Contempt of, 301.

Weariness. SEE Ennui.

Wicked people, 284.

Wife jealous sometimes desirable, LXXXIX.

Will, 30.

Wisdom, 132, 210, 231, 323, {4}44, LXXXIII.

Wise Man, who is a, 203, XCI.

Wishes, 295.

Wit, 199, 340, 413, 415, 421, 502.

Wives, 364, CIV.

Woman, 131, 204, 205, 220, 241, 277, 332, 333, 334,

340, 346, 362, 367, 368, 418, 429, 440, 466, 471,

474, LXX, XC.

Women, Severity of, 333.

-----, Virtue of, 205, 220, XC.

-----, Power of, LXXI.

Wonder, 384.

World, 201.

-----, Judgment of, 268.

-----, Approbation of, 201.

-----, Establishment in, 56.

-----, Praise and censure of, 454.

Young men, 378, 495.

Youth, 271, 341.

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