François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Life and career
François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) is remembered for his memoirs and, especially, the compressed observations collected in his Maxims. His writing turns attention toward motives that ordinary explanations of virtue may leave concealed. The English volume here identifies J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell as translators and includes introductory and explanatory material. A maxim's brevity is part of its challenge: its confidence can invite both recognition and resistance. Reading slowly leaves room to ask whether a sharp generalization illuminates an experience or oversimplifies it.
Suspicion in a short form
A maxim’s compression removes many qualifications that ordinary explanation would require. That makes recognition swift and disagreement productive. La Rochefoucauld repeatedly turns the language of virtue toward concealed motives, but his form also lets readers test a proposition against particular cases. The important question is not whether suspicion always wins, but when it clarifies something that a flattering account leaves unexplained.
Maxims and longer reflections
These maxims ask how often conduct praised as generous, courageous, or disinterested conceals a less admirable motive. Pride, vanity, self-love, habit, and the desire for approval recur beneath the surface of social behavior. The brevity of the form sharpens each proposition, but also leaves readers room to test its reach, resist its generalizations, or recognize an unwelcome truth. Alongside the principal sequence, this edition supplies supplementary maxims and longer reflections on particular subjects, making visible more than the familiar anthology of cutting sentences. J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell's English translation includes introductory and explanatory material. Reading slowly makes the collection a continuing argument about motives rather than a single verdict that nobody is ever sincere. English translation by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell, 1871.
Answer a sentence with an example
Choose a maxim and imagine a situation in which it illuminates conduct, then another in which it seems inadequate. Compare its confidence with a longer reflection elsewhere in the volume. The translators and introductory matter mediate this English encounter. Slow comparison preserves the collection as an argument rather than reducing its many observations to the claim that every generous action is fraudulent.