La Rochefoucauld was one of the great satirists in literature. His Maximes, written in the 17th Century, secured his place as the master of the ‘aphorism’ – the short pithy phrase.
He was a nobleman of his time, contemptuous of his own aristocratic milieu admired later by Nietzsche. His moral maxims made fun of the pretentious and virtue-sodden and, like Alexander Pope and Oscar Wilde, could see through the hideous nature of public virtue and private squalor.
The Frondeur (aristocratic rebel) was forever falling into quarrels with Cardinal Richelieu, and once spent eight days in the Bastille for hatching a plot to carry the...
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