Maxims (Bilingual Edition

Of all the French epigrammatic writers, La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) is at once the most widely known and the most distinguished. Voltaire said: 'One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the French] nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims by Fran ois, duc de La Rochefoucauld; though there is scarcely more than one truth running through the book-that 'self-love is the motive of everything'-yet, this thought is presented under so many varied aspects that it is nearly always striking.' And Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son: 'Till you come to know mankind by your own experience, I know no thing nor no man that can in the meantime bring you so well acquainted with them as La Rochefoucauld: his little book of Maxims, which I would advise you to look into, for some moments at least, every day of your life, is, I fear, too like and too exact a picture of human nature. I own it seems to degrade it, but yet my