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

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

François de La Rochefoucauld · Licencia: Public domain · Fuente

• 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 surprising and terrible accidents. ¶357
• 218.--Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. ¶358
• So Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, says, "You have done as much mischief to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society."--28 Sept. 1771.] ¶360
• 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. ¶361
• 220.--Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste. ¶362
• 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. ¶364
• 222.--Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their body, or their mind, is beginning to fail. ¶365
• 223.--Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend. ¶366
• 224.--All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful. ¶367
• 225.--What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit. ¶368
• 226.--Too great a hurry to discharge of an obligation is a kind of ingratitude. ¶370
• 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. ¶371
• 228.--Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay. ¶373
• 229.--The good we have received from a man should make us excuse the wrong he does us. ¶374
• 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. ¶375
• 231.--It is great folly to wish only to be wise. ¶376
• 232.--Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them. ¶377
• 234.--It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last. ¶380
• 235.--We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them. ¶381
• 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 delicate manner. ¶382
• 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. ¶383
• 238.--It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most men, as to do them too much good. ¶384
• 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 generally 'tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret. ¶385
• 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. ¶386
• 241.--Flirtation is at the bottom of woman's nature, although all do not practise it, some being restrained by fear, others by sense. ¶387
• 242.--We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them. ¶389
• 243.--Few things are impossible in themselves; application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means. ¶390
• 244.--Sovereign ability consists in knowing the value of things. ¶391
• 245.--There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability. ¶392
• 246.--What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interest. ¶394
• 247.--The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters. ¶395
• 248.--Magnanimity despises all, to win all. ¶396
• 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. ¶397
• 250.--True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that could be said. ¶398
• 251.--There are people whose faults become them, others whose very virtues disgrace them. ¶399
• 252.--It is as common to change one's tastes, as it is uncommon to change one's inclinations. ¶401
• 253.--Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and vices. ¶402
• 254.--Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant others. It is one of the devices 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. ¶403
• "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.] ¶405
• {There are numerous corrections necessary for this quotation; I will keep the original above so you can compare the correct passages: ¶406

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