Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
that they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.
["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort
that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we
cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take
a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one
kind or other." --Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I,
Sect. XVII}.]
{The translators' incorrectly cite Speech On Conciliation With America.
Also, Burke does not actually write "Ambition has been...", he writes
"It has been..." when speaking of ambition.}
51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfaction which we feel
with ourselves as seeing that we disapprove at one time of that which we
approve of at another.
52.--Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is
nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them
equal.
53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give, it is not she alone, but
fortune also that makes the hero.
54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to
avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the
very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard
themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by
which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior ranks of
mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure
which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive
Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded
by poverty and ignorance."--Gibbon, Decline And Fall, Chap. 15.]
55.--The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT
possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it
evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not
being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the
world.
56.--To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as
if we were established.
57.--Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are
not so often the result of a great design as of chance.
58.--It would seem that our actions have lucky or unlucky stars to which
they owe a great part of the blame or praise which is given them.
59.--There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skilful men will
not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn
them to their hurt.
60.--Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she
smiles.
61.--The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their
dispositions than their fortunes.
["Still to ourselves in every place consigned Our own felicity we make
or find." Goldsmith, Traveller, 431.]
62.--Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few
people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the
confidence of others.
63.--The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our
words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our
conversation.
64.--Truth does not do as much good in the world, as its counterfeits do
evil.
65.--There is no praise we have not lavished upon Prudence; and yet she
cannot assure to us the most trifling event.
[The author corrected this maxim several times, in 1665 it is No.
75; 1666, No. 66; 1671-5, No. 65; in the last edition it stands as at
present. In the first he quotes Juvenal, Sat. X., line 315. " Nullum
numen habes si sit Prudentia, nos te; Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam,
coeloque locamus." Applying to Prudence what Juvenal does to Fortune,
and with much greater force.]
66.--A clever man ought to so regulate his interests that each will fall
in due order. Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after
so many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after
the least we miss the greatest.
67.--What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.
68.--It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul
it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body
it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love--Plus many
mysteries.
["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly
beloved."--Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]
{Two notes about this quotation: (1) the translators' mistakenly
have "singularity" for the first "singularly" and (2) Hobbes does not
actually write "Love is the..."--he writes "Love of one..." under the
heading "The passion of Love."}
69.--If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other
passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and
of which even ourselves are ignorant.
70.--There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor
feign it where it does not.
71.--There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when
they love no longer.
72.--If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather
resembles hatred than friendship.
73.--We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is
rare to find those who have intrigued but once.
["Yet there are some, they say, who have had None}; But those who
have, ne'er end with only one}." {--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, {Canto} iii.,
stanza 4.]
74.--There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different
copies.
75.--Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both
cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
[So Lord Byron{Stanzas, (1819), stanza 3} says of Love-- "Like chiefs of
faction, His life is action."]
76.--There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person
speaks of it, few persons have seen it.
["Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- An unseen seraph, we believe
in thee-- A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,-- But never yet
hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form as it should be."
{--Lord Byron, }Childe Harold, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]
77.--Love lends its name to an infinite number of engagements
(Commerces) which are attributed to it, but with which it has no more
concern than the Doge has with all that is done in Venice.
78.--The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of
suffering injustice.
79.--Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself.
80.--What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is
difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of
the mind.
81.--We can love nothing but what agrees with us, and we can only follow
our taste or our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves;
nevertheless it is only by that preference that friendship can be true
and perfect.
82.--Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire to better our
condition, a weariness of war, the fear of some unlucky accident.
["Thus terminated that famous war of the Fronde. The Duke de la
Rochefoucauld desired peace because of his dangerous wounds and ruined
castles, which had made him dread even worse events. On the other side
the Queen, who had shown herself so ungrateful to her too ambitious
friends, did not cease to feel the bitterness of their resentment. 'I
wish,' said she, 'it were always night, because daylight shows me so
many who have betrayed me.'"--Memoires De Madame De Motteville, Tom.
IV., p. 60. Another proof that although these maxims are in some cases
of universal application, they were based entirely on the experience of
the age in which the author lived.]
83.--What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection
of reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours--in fact it is but a
trade in which self love always expects to gain something.
84.--It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our
friends.
85.--We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful
than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give
our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to
receive.
86.--Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.
87.--Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each
other.
[A maxim, adds Aime Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar
rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we
have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."--2
TIM. iii. 13.]
88.--Self love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our
friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them, and we
judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.
89.--Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.
90.--In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by
our good qualities.
91.--The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it
meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.
92.--To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him
as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in
believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.
[That is, they cured him. The madman was Thrasyllus, son of Pythodorus.
His brother Crito cured him, when he infinitely regretted the time of
his more pleasant madness.--See Aelian, Var. Hist. iv. 25. So Horace--
------------"Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis," ait, "cui sic
extorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error." HOR. EP.
ii--2, 138, of the madman who was cured of a pleasant lunacy.]
93.--Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact
that they can no longer set bad examples.
94.--Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to
sustain them.
95.--The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the
most yet obliged to praise it.
96.--A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with
ingratitude than his benefactor is.
97.--We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two
different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind.
This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can
be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must
agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all
the effects which we attribute to judgment.
98.--Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.
99.--Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined
thoughts.
100.--Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty things in an agreeable
manner.
101.--Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could
make them after much labour.
102.--The head is ever the dupe of the heart.
[A feeble imitation of that great thought "All folly comes from
the heart."--Aime Martin. But Bonhome, in his L'art De Penser, says
"Plusieurs diraient en periode quarre que quelques reflexions que fasse
l'esprit et quelques resolutions qu'il prenne pour corriger ses travers
le premier sentiment du coeur renverse tous ses projets. Mais il
n'appartient qu'a M. de la Rochefoucauld de dire tout en un mot que
l'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur."]
103.--Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts.
104.--Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge
rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never
judge rightly but at a distance.
105.--A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being.
A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.