Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims Part 2

7.--Great and striking actions which dazzle the eyes are represented by politicians as the effect of great designs, instead of which they are commonly caused by the temper and the pa.s.sions. Thus the war between Augustus and Anthony, which is set down to the ambition they entertained of making themselves masters of the world, was probably but an effect of jealousy.

8.--The pa.s.sions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with pa.s.sion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

[See Maxim 249 which is an ill.u.s.tration of this.]

9.--The pa.s.sions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.

10.--In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of pa.s.sions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.

11.--Pa.s.sions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity.

12.--Whatever care we take to conceal our pa.s.sions under the appearances of piety and honour, they are always to be seen through these veils.

[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps better--"however we may conceal our pa.s.sions under the veil, etc., there is always some place where they peep out."]

13.--Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

14.--Men are not only p.r.o.ne to forget benefits and injuries; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

15.--The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.

["So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame and endear them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying it."--Montesquieu, Esprit Des Lois, Lib. VI., C. 21.]

16.--This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.

[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which he lived. Here the clemency spoken of is nothing more than an expression of the policy of Anne of Austria. Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the favour of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she bestowed her favours upon those she hated; her friends were forgotten.--Aime Martin. The reader will hereby see that the age in which the writer lived best interprets his maxims.]

17.--The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their temper.

18.--Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

19.--We have all sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of others.

[The strongest example of this is the pa.s.sage in Lucretius, lib. ii., line I:-- "Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem."]

20.--The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.

[Thus wisdom is only hypocrisy, says a commentator. This definition of constancy is a result of maxim 18.]

21.--Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

[See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]

22.--Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

23.--Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.

24.--When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

[Both these maxims have been rewritten and made conciser by the author; the variations are not worth quoting.]

25.--We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.

["Prosperity do{th} best discover vice, but adversity do{th} best discover virtue."--Lord Bacon, Essays{, (1625), "Of Adversity"}.]

{The quotation wrongly had "does" for "doth".}

26.--Neither the sun nor death can be looked at without winking.

27.--People are often vain of their pa.s.sions, even of the worst, but envy is a pa.s.sion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

28.--Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable, as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of others.

29.--The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.

30.--We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an excuse we say things are impossible.

31.--If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

32.--Jealousy lives upon doubt; and comes to an end or becomes a fury as soon as it pa.s.ses from doubt to certainty.