SOURCE: Hope, Quentin M. “La Rochefoucauld and the Vicissitudes of Time.” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 28, no. 54 (2001): 105-20.

In the following essay, Hope observes that La Rochefoucauld's maxims comment on all stages of life and are keenly aware of the joys and hardships of human existence.

Many of La Rochefoucauld's best-known and most quoted maxims present themselves as timeless. That hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, that we can all bear the misfortunes of others are observations of human behaviour independent of time and change. These are maxims that apply at all places, in all times, to all men and women. Another substantial group of maxims, and a number of the Réflexions diverses as well, consider man as he is carried along by the flow of time and shaped by its constant succession of random events. (These are maxims that consider man specifically. Whether...