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

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

François de La Rochefoucauld · الترخيص: Public domain · المصدر

• 56.--To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as if we were established. ¶160
• 57.--Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. ¶161
• 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. ¶162
• 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. ¶163
• 60.--Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles. ¶164
• 61.--The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes. ¶165
• 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. ¶167
• 63.--The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation. ¶168
• 64.--Truth does not do as much good in the world, as its counterfeits do evil. ¶169
• 65.--There is no praise we have not lavished upon Prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event. ¶170
• 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. ¶172
• 67.--What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind. ¶173
• 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 delicate wish to possess what we love--Plus many mysteries. ¶174
• {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."} ¶176
• 69.--If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and of which even ourselves are ignorant. ¶177
• 70.--There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not. ¶178
• 71.--There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer. ¶179
• 72.--If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather resembles hatred than friendship. ¶180
• 73.--We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is rare to find those who have intrigued but once. ¶181
• 74.--There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different copies. ¶183
• 75.--Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear. ¶184
• 76.--There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it. ¶186
• 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. ¶188
• 78.--The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice. ¶189
• 79.--Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself. ¶190
• 80.--What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind. ¶191
• 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. ¶192
• 82.--Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, the fear of some unlucky accident. ¶193
• 83.--What men term friendship is merely a partnership 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. ¶195
• 84.--It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends. ¶196
• 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 expect to receive. ¶197
• 86.--Our distrust of another justifies his deceit. ¶198
• 87.--Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. ¶199
• 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. ¶201
• 89.--Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment. ¶202
• 90.--In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities. ¶203
• 91.--The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object. ¶204
• 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. ¶205
• 93.--Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples. ¶207
• 94.--Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to sustain them. ¶208

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