François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

A pessimistic and cynical collection of maxims, mostly about human interactions. Like most collections of maxims, it is quick to read and – also like most collections of maxims – it can sometimes be repetitive or state the obvious. It is an enjoyable collection, but I did not think La Rochefoucauld went especially deep. His maxims were more often personal observations jerry-rigged into abstraction than any sort of rigorous philosophy.

I will be adding this book of more than 500 maxims to my daily reflections, along with The Daily Stoic and James Allen's As A Man Thinketh. I had to read each maxim at least twice, as there is nothing in this book that should be overlooked. Unlike a novel, where the virtue or vice considered as part of an overarching theme builds over time, each maxim in this book is straight to the point, causing one to pause and reflect on each occasion. There are too many favourite maxims to list, but show more this one resonates deeply: "239. To whatever we may ascribe our misfortunes, they are generally the results of selfishness and of vanity". La Rochefoucauld uses wit and humour to address life lessons that mirror life itself. What I mean by this is that if one were to read this book sans humour, one would want to end it all - the reality would be too much. Likewise, sans seriousness, this would not be remotely funny. But by moving between old and young, male and female (inherently sexist in a seventeenth-century way), humorous and foreboding, witty and caustic, and so on, the maxims paint a picture of wisdom that can only come from one who has had the mask of self-deception torn from his face. If fools learn by their mistakes, then this is one book where the wise might learn from the mistakes of fools. But don't get too cocky: "214. A man (sic) who is never foolish is not as wise as he thinks". show less

Maximes Supprimeés (after the First Edition)
"La sobriété est l'amour de la santé, ou l'impuissance de manger beaucoup."(p95, Flammarion)
Moderation is either a love of health, or the inability to eat and drink any more.

"Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre garder notre secret si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-memes?" (p99) Compare Ben Franklin's improvement:
"Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
(Poor Richard's Almanac, 70 years after Maxims, 1665.)

"C'est une ennuyeuse show more maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime." Ahh, Diet, the sacred American program, is an illness.

The very first suppressed maxim, two pages long, applies well to the Trumpster: "Self-esteem is self-love. "Il rend les hommes idolâtres d'eux-mêmes et les rend tyrans des autres si la fortune leur en donne les moyens"(91). "It turns men into idolaters of themselves, and tyrants to others if they gain means to be." Nothing is so impetuous as the desires of self-love, "Rien n'est aussi impétueux que ses désirs."

Funerals: "Les pompe des enterrements regarde plus la vanité des vivants que l'honneur des morts."(96) The pomp of funerals issues more from the vanity of the living than from honoring the dead.
"On n'est jamais si malheureux qu'on croit, ni si heureux qu'on avait esperé."(93) You are never as unhappy as you think, nor as happy as you had hoped.

Non-Supprimeés

"Le monde récompense plus souvent les apparences de mérite que le mérite même."(p59)
US Election, 2016? The world recompenses the appearance of merit more than real merit.

"Tout le monde se plaint de sa mémoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement."(Max #89, p.53)
"Everyone complains of his memory; no-one of his judgement," I first heard from my Ph.D. director, Leonard Unger.

"L'accent du pays où l'on est né demeure dans l'esprit et dans le coeur, comme dans le langage," reminds me of the regional accents of England and Italy, but especially of my mid-western wife, from Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin whose former accent betrayed her friendliness to arrogant New Englanders.

Textes Complimentaire.
"Portrait." LaR includes a self-portrait where he says he has too much chin, and that, though he "possesses his language rather well [!], his passions, especially anger, often intrude so that he doesn't express himself as well as he hoped." Cardinal de Retz, for his part, accuses LaR of "lack of penetration" perhaps because the writer avoids religion as a subject.

"De la Retrait," on Retirement. Why old people don't make friends, not finding many true friends, but also thinking those who have died were truer than any new ones: "Ils deviennent insensibles d'amitié, non seulement parce que qu'ils n'en ont peut-être jamais trouvé de véritable, mais parce qui'ils ont vu mourir un grand nombre de leur amis qui n'avaient pas encore eu le temps ni les occasions de manquer à l'amitié et ils se persuadent aisément qu'ils auraient été plus fidèles que ceux qui leur restent." (137) show less

If you can get past the misogyny in some of the maxims you'll find a sharp, cynical, acid wit that packages his punches on our supposed secrets and pretensions in charming one-phrase pellets.