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la rochefoucauld favorites
22
Philosophy triumphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.26
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily
31
If we had no faults ourselves, we should not take so much pleasure in remarking them in others.37
Pride has a greater share than goodness of heart in the remonstrances we make to those who are guilty of faults; we reprove not so much with a view to correct them as to persuade them that we are exempt from those faults ourselves.39
Interest speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness.101
It often happens that things present themselves to our minds in a more complete state than we could by much art make them arrive at.138
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk of ourselves at all.
By Swifty | December 2, 2006 in Banality, Europe, Flowers of evil, France, Labyrinths, Matters of Appearance, Objet petit a, Picayune, Psychoanalysis, Quotes | Permalink
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More favs from La Rochefoucuald:
172
If we examine well the different effects of ennui, we shall find that it makes us neglect more duties than interest does.
189
It would seen that nature has prescribed to every one from the moment of his birth certain limits for virtue and vice.
199
The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.
212
The generality of people only judge of men by the fashion they are in, or by their fortunes.
234
It is more often from pride than from want of intelligencethat people oppose with so much obstinacy the most received opinions. They find the best places taken on the good side, and do not like to put up with inferior ones.
267
Readiness to believe evil without sufficient examination is the result of pride and indolence. We wish to find people guilty, and we do not wish to give ourselves the trouble of examining into the crimes.
316
Weak people cannot be sincere.
Posted by: Swifty | Dec 3, 2006 4:12:43 PM
You forgot the all-time best quote by La Rochefoucauld:
Self-esteem is cleverer than the cleverest person in the world.
Posted by: Otto Weininger | Dec 5, 2006 4:37:52 AM
126
Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
rather dulls the edge of the razor.
Posted by: nnyhav | Dec 5, 2006 1:26:14 PM
I like it that some of them are false or half-false. However, the one about the sun and death is truly stellar to the point of being quite unbearable. Did Huysmans base his entire oeuvre on La Rochefoucauld? There is a kind of sensibility that goes into this glacial attitude with more fierceness than most can sustain...
[some of these letter-number combos, card-keys all, are quite prohibitive]
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Dec 5, 2006 6:33:02 PM
One of my favorites is 168 :
L'espérance, toute trompeuse qu'elle est, sert au moins à nous mener à la fin de la vie par un chemin agréable.
Posted by: John B | Dec 6, 2006 5:15:23 PM
And then, life certainly does provide plenty of occasions to confirm the truth of number 19 :
Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui.
A site where they are all presented :
http://sami.is.free.fr/Oeuvres/la_rochefoucauld_maximes_1.html
Posted by: John B | Dec 8, 2006 6:31:41 AM
John B I love the last one that you quote as well. It's one of the maxims that made me laugh out loud, rather than just smile to myself. It's very funny. And maybe it should just be left like that! Maybe the right way to read maxims is in a maxim sort of way; precisely the point is for the 'bon mot' to slap at the mind from a direction it is not expecting. Too much detailed attention to what the quotation 'means' is exactly the wrong way to read them. But Patrick Mullins comment is also accurate, namely, that these sayings sometimes seem half-true, half-false. If we take that approach, then the maxims call out for attentive reading and better and worse readings. And so: "We always have enough strength to bear the misfortunes of others." Not only is this true, but the person not experiencing the misfortunes often gets bored, or even cross with the misfortuned person. Example: Jobs' friends, who come around, and they're not the ones with the incredibly bad skin disease, and they can see that Job is suffering, but they just can't help themselves talking to Job, giving him 'advice,' and even criticizing him, in a way that reveals the only reason they think as they do is that they are not the ones experiencing the misfortune. Unlike Job, his friends are able to bear Job's bad luck. They don't turn on God; instead, they reaffirm their trust in God.
There are some thinkers who put a lot of faith in human sympathy as a glue for human society. Well, where does this sympathy come from? Is it just innate? There's a debate on this. For some of the leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, 'sympathy' is the name we give to the small amount of pain we experience when contemplating the pain of others. If we're watching Dustin Hoffman get drilled in Marathon Man, hey, it's uncomfortable! I know some people who won't see that movie because they're already afraid of dentists. It kind of hurts -- makes us wince a bit -- when we see the pain of others. And so it turns out our 'sympathy' for others is based on a psychological aversion to the small bit of pain we experience when observing others in pain! By way of contrast, Rousseau claims that sympathy is more innate: there's not some detour through self-interest we have to go through to get to the point where we care about the pain of others. It's not some indirect ironic process where, ha ha, our concern for others is actually the result of something as basic as our own aversion to pain! And besides, we could ask if the Scottish Enlighteners fully explored the phenomenon in question -- what they describe as the bit of pain we experience when viewing others in pain or distress -- in all its possible permutations. Is it reliably painful? Is it a strong enough pain to overcome self-interest? Isn't that a fairly thin glue with which to stick together society and account for human solidarity? Rousseau's idea is that we spontaneously gush out to creatures in distress when education, 'culture,' and refined, sarcastic society has not corrupted us. We naturally don't want to see that poor fox suffer in a fox trap, especially when it is right in front of us. Is part of that imagining how horrible it would be to be caught in such a trap? "How would you feel if your right leg was caught in a huge metal trap with sharp teeth that are digging into your body and you couldn't get away?" Of course that's part of it, and this is also how we normally argue with others and with ourselves. But even if agents are thinking along these "how would you feel" lines, it doesn't follow that they're taking the indirect route described by the Scottishers. No, that argument is better thought of as expressing and justifying a sentiment that's already there. So says Rousseau.
Is it even true that observers of pain in others always, or in the overwhelming majority of cases, experience pain at all? Or again, enough pain to motivate the reaching out to others that is still, after all, an important part of human society?
Posted by: Swifty | Dec 8, 2006 6:22:14 PM
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