Maxims

Maxims is a collection of short aphorisms by François duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 to 1680), first published in 1665 under the title Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales. Each entry examines why people act as they do, and the answer it gives is rarely flattering.

La Rochefoucauld treats claims of loyalty, friendship and affection with scepticism. His position is that pure virtue and disinterested feeling are almost always mixed with some measure of self-interest, and he presses that point with merciless precision.

This is non-fiction in the French moralist tradition: moral philosophy delivered in compressed, self-contained sentences, with no plot and no argument spread over chapters. The outlook is bitter and pessimistic, and it helped shape the taste of seventeenth-century France.

The Introduction by Leonard Tancock, who is also credited on this edition, reads the book as the record of one man's experience. It carries his likes and dislikes, his petty spites, his regrets over past foolishness and his wisdom after the event, all turned into statements of absolute truth. Reading it means dipping into brief, sharp, unsparing observations on human motive.