Maxims

François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it. Born in Paris on the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac. Examples of Maxims: I. Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers. VIII. Sincere enthusiasm is the only orator who always persuades. It is like an art the rules of which never fail; the simplest man with enthusiasm persuades better than the most eloquent with none. XIV. Men are not only subject to losing all recollection of kindnesses and injuries done them, they even hate those to whom they are obliged and cease to hate those who have harmed them. The effort of repaying the kindness and avenging the evil seem to them a servitude to which they are unwilling to submit. XXX. If we had no faults, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. CCLXI. Flirtatiousness is fundamental to a woman's nature, but not all put it into practice because some are restrained by fear or by good sense. CDXI. There hardly exist faults which are not more pardonable than the means by which one tries to hide them.