Maxims

The bitter and pessimistic philosophy expressed in this work was to contribute greatly to the taste of seventeenth-century France. Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613—80) published his Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales in 1665. In them he analyses the motives lying behind human conduct with merciless penetration. Greeting with scepticism avowals of loyalty, friendship and affection, he reveals pure virtue and disinterested sentiments to be almost always tainted with some element of egoism. 'The book of La Rochefoucauld not only has a point of view,' as Leonard Tancock comments in his Introduction, 'but it is one of the most deeply felt, most intensely lived texts in French literature. It is one man's experience, his likes and dislikes, sufferings and petty spites, self-revelations and self-betrayals, regrets for past foolishness and wisdom after the event, crystallized into absolute truths.'