art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man
with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

[See Maxim 249 which is an illustration of this.]

9.--The passions 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 passions; so
that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.

11.--Passions 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 passions 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 passions 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 prone 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 be