Background
He was born at Paris, France, September 15, 1613, of a distinguished and ancient Poitou family. His boyhood was spent in Angoulême.
(The philosophy of La Rochefoucauld, which influenced Fren...)
The philosophy of La Rochefoucauld, which influenced French intellectuals as diverse as Voltaire and the Jansenists, is captured here in more than 600 penetrating and pithy aphorisms. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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He was born at Paris, France, September 15, 1613, of a distinguished and ancient Poitou family. His boyhood was spent in Angoulême.
Following his marriage, La Rochefoucauld came to Paris to take part in the battles of the Fronde. A gunshot wound received in 1652 resulted in an impairment of his sight. At the death of his father in 1653 he succeeded to the title of duke. He spent his declining years in the company of Mme. de La Fayette, and whose friendship modified the cynical views to which he had given conspicuous expression in the famous Maximes (1665). La Rochefoucauld died of gout at Paris, Mar. 17, 1680, attended at the end by his old friend, the noted orator and writer Bossuet. In his Mémoires (1662) La Rochefoucauld recounts in an impartial, detached manner his own unsuccessful role in the struggles of the Fronde. His objective style recurs with greater brilliance in his chief work, the Maximes, an uncontested masterpiece of epigrammatic commentary on man's practice of self-deception in accounting for his acts. The originality of La Rochefoucauld lies not in his basic premise - that mankind is motivated solely by disguised vanity, or amour propre - but in the skill and subtle perception with which he illustrates his principle in concise lines of high stylistic beauty and keen intellectual insight.
(The philosophy of La Rochefoucauld, which influenced Fren...)
Sometimes called a pessimist, La Rochefoucauld is best understood as a realist who accepted society with all its imperfections, finding in his personal doctrine of universal egoism a kind of natural law which explained and thus rendered tolerable man's foibles.
Adventuresome and amorous by nature, La Rochefoucauld formed a series of attachments to outstanding women of his day: Mme. de Chevreuse; Mme. de Longueville, the précieuse; precieuse; Mme. de Sable, the Jansenist; and finally Mme. de La Fayette.
He was married at the age of fifteen to Andrée de Vivonne, a cousin of Catherine de Vivonne