The following maxims are of doubtful authenticity, but have often been attributed to La Rochefoucauld by recent editors. They fall into three distinct groups.
The first two items come from the pirated Dutch edition of the maxims, Sentences et Maximes de morale (The Hague: Jean and Daniel Steucker, 1663 or 1664). Nearly everything in this edition can be found in well-authenticated manuscripts of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims and/or in the first authorized edition, but these two sections (paragraphs 108–1oa and 152–5) cannot. They read as follows:
La familiarité est un relâchement presque de toutes les règles de la vie civile, que le libertinage a introduit dans la société pour nous faire parvenir à celle qu ’on appelle commode.
C’est un effet de l’amour-propre qui, voulant tout accommoder à notre faiblesse, nous soustrait à l’honnête sujétion que nous imposent les bonnes mœurs et, pour chercher trop les moyens de nous les rendre commodes, les fait dégénérer en vices.
Les femmes, ayant naturellement plus de mollesse que les hommes, tombent plutôt dans ce relâchement, et y perdent davantage: l’autorité du sexe ne se maintient pas, le respect qu’on lui doit diminue, et l’on peut dire que l’honnête y perd la plus grande partie de ses droits.
(Familiarity is a weakening of almost every rule of polite life; it has been introduced into society by licentiousness, so that we might attain the kind of life that is called ‘comfortable’.
This results from self-love, which wants to reconcile everything to our own frailty; it releases us from the virtuous state of submissiveness imposed on us by good moral values, and it tries so hard to make them comfortable for us, that it allows them to degenerate into vices.
Women, being inherently softer than men, fall more easily into this weakness and lose more by doing so; the authority of their sex is weakened, the respect it deserves is diminished, and we may say that virtue has lost the largest part of its rights in this way.)
La raillerie est une gaieté agréable de l’esprit, qui enjoue la conversation, et qui lie la société si elle est obligeante, ou qui la trouble si elle ne l’est pas.
Elle est plus pour celui qui la fait que pour celui qui la souffre.
C’est toujours un combat de bel esprit, que produit la vanité; d’où vient que ceux qui en manquent pour la soutenir, et ceux qu’un défaut reproché fait rougir, s’en offensent également, comme d’une défaite injurieuse qu ’ils ne sauraient pardonner.
C’est un poison qui tout pur éteint l’amitié et excite la haine, mais qui corrigé par l’agrément de l’esprit, et la flatterie de la louange, l’acquiert ou la conserve; et il en faut user sobrement avec ses amis et avec les faibles.
(Jocularity is an attractive gaiety of the mind, which makes conversation playful; if it is helpful, it unites the social group, and if it is not, it perturbs it.
It does more for the joker than for his victim.
It is always a battle of wits produced by vanity. As a result, those who lack the wit to sustain it, and those who blush when rebuked for a fault, are equally offended by it—as if by an insulting defeat that they are unable to forgive.
It is a poison which, in its pure form, extinguishes friendship and arouses hatred, but when corrected by the attraction of wit and the flattery of praise, it wins friends or retains them; and it should be used sparingly with one’s friends, or with the weak.)
The discussion of jocularity may be compared with RD 16.
The next two items come from a seventeenth-century manuscript (Arsenal ms 6041) containing copies of fourteen maxims. The manuscript does not indicate their author(s), but twelve of them are certainly by La Rochefoucauld; they are V: 154 and 302–12, all of which first appeared in the third authorized edition (1671). However, the manuscript’s maxims 8 and 9 (placed between V: 307 and 308) are otherwise unknown. They are:
Nos actions paraissent moins par ce qu’elles sont que par le jour qu ’il plaît à la fortune de leur donner.
(The appearance of our deeds depends less on what they are than on the light that fortune is pleased to shed on them.)
On se venge quelquefois mieux de ses ennemis en leur faisant du bien qu’en leur faisant du mal.
(We sometimes take better vengeance on our enemies by doing good to them than by doing evil to them.)
Finally, three alleged sayings of La Rochefoucauld are recorded in early eighteenth-century memoirs. The first of them comes from Pierre Des-maiseaux (or Desmaizeaux), La Vie de … Saint-Évremont (publisher unspecified, 1705), the others from Jean de Segrais, Segraisiana (Paris: Compagnie des libraires associés, 1721), 81 and 89. Of course, even if they were indeed uttered by La Rochefoucauld, they need not be reckoned among his maxims. As Jean Lafond has pointed out, the first is more a witticism than a maxim—though the two categories are not mutually exclusive.
L ’enfer des femmes, c ’est la vieillesse.
(For women, hell is old age.)
Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld disait que les soumissions et les bassesses que les Seigneurs de la Cour font auprès des Ministres qui ne sont pas de leur rang, sont des lâchetés de gens de cœur.
(Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld said that acts of deference and self-abasement done by noblemen in the presence of socially inferior ministers are acts of cowardice done by brave men.)
Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld disait que l’honnêteté n’était d’aucun état en particulier, mais de tous les états en général.
(Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld said that honor was of no estate in particular, but of all estates in general.)