



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





REFLECTIONS; OR SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS

By Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac


Translated from the Editions of 1678 and 1827 with introduction, notes,
and some account of the author and his times.

By J. W. Willis Bund, M.A. LL.B and J. Hain Friswell

Simpson Low, Son, and Marston, 188, Fleet Street.

1871.


{TRANSCRIBERS NOTES: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour
instead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); the
translators' comments are in square brackets [...] as they are in the
text; footnotes are indicated by * and appear immediately following the
passage containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of
the page); and, finally, corrections and addenda are in curly brackets
{...}.}



ROCHEFOUCAULD

"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature--I believe them true. They
argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind."--Swift.

"Les Maximes de la Rochefoucauld sont des proverbs des gens
d'esprit."--Montesquieu.

"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations."--Sir J. Mackintosh.

"Translators should not work alone; for good Et Propria Verba do not
always occur to one mind."--Luther's Table Talk, iii.



CONTENTS


     Preface (translator's)
     Introduction (translator's)
     Reflections and Moral Maxims
     First Supplement
     Second Supplement
     Third Supplement
     Reflections on Various Subjects
     Index




Preface.

 {Translators'}
Some apology must be made for an attempt "to translate the
untranslatable." Notwithstanding there are no less than eight English
translations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly any are readable, none are free
from faults, and all fail more or less to convey the author's meaning.
Though so often translated, there is not a complete English edition
of the Maxims and Reflections. All the translations are confined
exclusively to the Maxims, none include the Reflections. This may be
accounted for, from the fact that most of the translations are taken
from the old editions of the Maxims, in which the Reflections do
not appear. Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text of
Rochefoucauld, the various editions were but reprints of the preceding
ones, without any regard to the alterations made by the author in the
later editions published during his life-time. So much was this the
case, that Maxims which had been rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last
edition, were still retained in the body of the work. To give but one
example, the celebrated Maxim as to the misfortunes of our friends, was
omitted in the last edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's
life-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim appears in the body
of the work.

M. Aime Martin in 1827 published an edition of the Maxims and
Reflections which has ever since been the standard