The judgment the reader will be most inclined to adopt will perhaps be… — Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims — François de La Rochefoucauld

The judgment the reader will be most inclined to adopt will perhaps be either that of Mr. Hallam, "Concise 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 appearance at least of profundity; they delight the intelligent 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 consolation to the idle, the curious, and the worthless part of mankind."

Place: ¶58
License: Public domain · Source
The text is given as in the edition, unedited.

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