Fran^cois de La Rochefoucauld - Collected Maxims and Other Reflections: with parallel French text (Oxford Worlds Classics)

COLLECTED MAXIMS

AND OTHER REFLECTIONS

F L R, a member of a prominent French aristocratic family, was born in Paris in . He was married at the age of

and took part in his first military campaign the following year. For the next quarter of a century he participated actively in military life, supporting the interests of the hereditary French aristocracy not only against foreign armies, but at times also against the king and his chief minister (Richelieu under Louis XIII, Mazarin under Louis XIV). When Louis XIV finally gained control of Paris in , La Rochefoucauld retired from public life. In

he began to compose the sayings published in as Rflexions ou Sentenceset Maximes morales ( Moral Reflections or Sententiae and Maxims). The work was carefully revised several times, its fifth and final authorized edition appearing in . La Rochefoucauld died in Paris in . Many further maxims, and the nineteen essays now known as the Rflexions diverses ( Miscellaneous Reflections), were published posthumously from his manuscripts.

E. H. and A. M. B and F G have translated Twelve Plays by Alfred de Musset and George Sands Five Comedies and TheDevils Pool and Other Stories. E. H. and A. M. Blackmore have also edited and translated nine other volumes of French literature, including, in Oxford Worlds Classics, Six French Poets of the Nineteenth Century, The EssentialVictor Hugo, and Stphane Mallarms Collected Poems and Other Verse. Their work has been awarded the American Literary Translators Association Prize and the Modern Language Association Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation. Their other publications include literary criticism and studies in psy-cholinguistics and grammatical awareness.

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OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS

FRANOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Collected Maxims

and Other Reflections

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

E. H. A. M. BLACKMORE

and FRANCINE GIGURE

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford

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E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Gigure 2007

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2007

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You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

La Rochefoucauld, Franois, duc de, 16131680.

[Maximes, English]

Collected maxims and other reflections / Franois de la Rochefoucauld ; translated with an introduction and notes by

E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Gigure.

(Oxford worlds classics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Blackmore, E. H.

II. Blackmore, A. M.

III. Gigure, Francine.

IV. Title.

PQ1815,A72 2007

848.402dc22

2006019481

ISBN-13: 9780192806499 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0192806491 (alk. paper)

Typeset in Ehrhardt

by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by

Clays Ltd., St Ives plc

ISBN 97801992806499

CONTENTS

vi

Contents

I

Rflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, first () edition

II

Rflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, second () edition

III

Rflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, third () edition

IV

Rflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, fourth () edition

V

Rflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, fifth () edition

VIs

Rflexions ou Sentences morales, supplement to the sixth () edition

L

Liancourt manuscript, c.

PV

Maxims sent to Jacques Esprit, c.

PV

Maxims sent to Madame de Sabl,

RD

Rflexions diverses

RDA

Addenda to the Rflexions diverses

SL

Smith-Lesouf manuscript,

Further information can be found in the Note on the Text and Translation (p. xxxiii).

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Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily, declares La Rochefoucauld ( : ). The same may be said of his Moral Reflections or Sententiae and Maxims. Few books as widely read have provoked as much resistance. Most of us can no more look at it without wavering than we could the sun. We cannot bear the thought that it might be true; the consequences would be too painful. So, to shut our eyes to it, to avoid facing it, we rely on every psychological defence we can muster. The book is a work of cynicism, pessimism, scepticism, Jansenism, or some other limited and limiting -ism; we ourselves are much wiser, and take a broader, more balanced view of humanity. Or it is inconsistent, and contains its own refutation. Or it is true only of La Rochefoucauld himself (how corrupt he must be, to be capable of thinking us corrupt!). Or it may be true of many people, but it is not true of us. Or if it is, it is true of us only in our worst moments, or only in some details. Or if we do happen to entertain the thought that it might be wholly true, we entertain that thought only while actually reading it; a few minutes later we put the book aside and turn our minds to other, more comfortable things; we live, in practice, as if we had never read it.

More curiously still, those defences are employed almost as often by La Rochefoucaulds admirers as by his opponents. Even the author of