Here is, perhaps, the most current of all La Rochefoucauld's maxims: No. 218. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue. Of the foregoing maxim it may justly be said, that its truth and point depend upon the assumption, implicit, that there is such a thing as virtue--an assumption which the whole tenor of the "Maxims" in general contradicts. How incisive the following: No. 226. Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of ingratitude. No. 298. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to receive greater favors. No. 304. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore. No. 313. Why should we have memory enough to retain even the smallest particulars of what has happened to us, and yet not have enough to remember how often we have told them to the same individual? The first following maxim satirizes both princes and courtiers. It might be entitled, "How to insult a prince, and not suffer for your temerity": No. 320. To praise princes for virtues they have not, is to insult them with impunity. No. 347. We find few sensible people, except those who are of our way of thinking. No. 409. We should often be ashamed of our best actions, if the world saw the motives which cause them. No. 424. We boast of faults the reverse of those we have: when we are weak, we boast of being stubborn. Here, at length, is a maxim that does not depress--that animates you: No. 432. To praise noble actions heartily is in some sort to take part in them. The following is much less exhilarating: No. 454. There are few instances in which we should make a bad bargain, by giving up the good that is said of us, on condition that nothing bad be said. This, also: No. 458. Our enemies come nearer to the truth, in the opinions they form of us, than we do ourselves. Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly "suppressed" by the author, after first publication: No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always find something which does not displease us. Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, "Even in the midst of compassion we feel within us an unaccountable bitter-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing another suffer;" and Burke, after both, wrote (in his "Sublime and Beautiful") with a heavier hand, "I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others." La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than is Montaigne. But as a man he wins upon you less. His maxims are like hard and sharp crystals, precipitated from the worldly wisdom blandly solute and dilute in Montaigne. The wise of this world reject the dogma of human depravity, as taught in the Bible. They willingly accept it--nay, accept it complacently, hugging themselves for their own penetration--as taught in the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld.