Reflections

Reflections; Or Sentences and
Moral Maxims [with accents]

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Title: Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Author: Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9105] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 8,

2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL
MAXIMS ***

{Transcriber's notes: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour instead
of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); words that were italicized
appear in all CAPITALS; the translators' comments are in square
brackets [...] as they are in the text; footnotes are indicated by * and
appear in angled brackets <...> immediately following the passage
containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of the page);
and, finally, I give corrections and addenda 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.

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.

{Translators'} Preface.
Some apology must be made for an attempt “to translate the
untranslatable.” Not- withstanding 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 trans- lations 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. Aimé Martin in 1827 published an edition of the Maxims and
Reflections which has ever since been the standard text of
Rochefoucauld in France. The Maxims are printed from the edition of
1678, the last published during the author's life, and the last which
received his corrections. To this edition were added two Supplements;
the first containing the Maxims which had appeared in the editions of
1665, 1666, and 1675, and which were afterwards omitted; the second,
some additional Maxims found among various of the author's
manuscripts in the Royal Library at Paris. And a Series of Re- flections
which had been previously published in a work called “Receuil de
pièces d'histoire et de litté- rature.” Paris, 1731. They were first
published with the Maxims in an edition by Gabriel Brotier.
In an edition of Rochefoucauld entitled “Reflex- ions, ou Sentences et
Maximes Morales, augmentées de plus deux cent nouvelles Maximes et
Maximes et Pensées diverses suivant les copies Imprimées à