of their fellows, a high place should be reserved for
the Maxims of Rochefoucauld".



REFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS


Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

[This epigraph which is the key to the system
of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form
as No. 179 of the maxims of the first edition, 1665, it is
omitted from the 2nd and 3rd, and reappears for the first
time in the 4th edition, in 1675, as at present, at the head
of the Reflections.--AIME MARTIN. Its best answer is ar-
rived at by reversing the predicate and the subject, and
you at once form a contradictory maxim equally true, our
vices are most frequently but virtues disguised.]

1.--What we term virtue is often but a mass of
various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or
our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not
always from valour or from chastity that men are
brave, and women chaste.

"Who combats bravely is not therefore brave,
He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave;
Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,
His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies."