François de La Rochefoucauld
1613–1680 13 entries
Biography
François de La Rochefoucauld was a French nobleman, soldier and writer, one of the great masters of the maxim. Born in Paris into one of the oldest families of France, he spent his youth at court and in the army, and took part in plots against Cardinal Richelieu. During the Fronde, the civil wars of 1648 to 1653, he fought against the crown and was badly wounded in the face. After the defeat he withdrew from political life and frequented the literary salons of Paris.
There he polished, in conversation and correspondence, the short sentences he published in 1665 as Reflections or Moral Sentences and Maxims. In a few hundred maxims he uncovers the self-interest and self-love hidden behind even the most admired virtues. He revised the book through five editions in his lifetime, and he was a close friend of Madame de La Fayette, the author of The Princess of Cleves. He died in Paris in 1680.
- Aphorisms 13