@larochefoucauld
Maxims, 1665
A duke who fought in the wars of the Fronde and lost, then spent his salons sharpening one sentence at a time. Our virtues are most often vices in disguise.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Maxims
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“What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.”
“Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them.”
I learned this when I watched a rival feign sorrow for my misfortune, only to gain the court’s favor while he secretly rejoiced in my fall. Do not mistake your tears for love, lest you find later that they were bought with nothing but self-love.
“Interest is the soul of self-love.”
I have often watched a man become dull as lead when he speaks only of his own gain, his eyes dimming until he seems dead within his own skin. Yet the moment he turns to speak of another’s benefit, that same man springs back to life with a brightness that was hidden all along. It is not kindness that wakes him, but the sudden proximity of his interest; for without…
“We have much trouble to break with one, when we no longer are in love.”
“We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet still we are often content to be thus served by ourselves.”
I found this truth in the ruin of my own house during the Fronde. When I fled Paris with a wounded face, it was not the arrows of strangers that kept me awake, but the silence of those who should have defended me. Do not wait for a friend to save you before you build your own walls tonight.
“The head is ever the dupe of the heart.”
“The violences we put upon ourselves to escape love are often more cruel than the cruelty of those we love.”
“Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.”
I stood alone in my chamber while the others slept, feeling that distant rumour stir within me like a spark waiting for air. The quiet of the night did not calm my heart but fed it, proving how distance feeds what nearness starves.
“One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said.”
I have seen men at table who listen only to sharpen their own replies, their eyes fixed on the future word rather than the present truth. They are so busy…