La Rochefoucauld, François (1613-1680)

French writer. His ‘Réflexions, ou sentences et maximes morales/Reflections, or Moral Maxims’, published anonymously in 1665, is a collection of brief, epigrammatic, and cynical observations on life and society, with the epigraph ‘Our virtues are mostly our vices in disguise’. The work is remarkable for its literary excellence and its bitter realism in the dissection of basic human motives, making La Rochefoucauld a forerunner of modern ‘psychological’ writers.

He was born in Paris and joined the army at an early age. He soon began to figure in public life, becoming engaged in intrigues against Richelieu and in the Fronde revolts. Severely wounded at the siege of Paris and again at the fight at the Port Saint-Antoine in 1652, he retired to the country for a while, but returned to court and became a prominent leader of the literary salon of Madame de Sablé. He was a lover of Mme de Lafayette. His Mémoires were published in 1662 and his Lettres are also of historic and social interest.