La Rochefoucauld on human hypocrisy

Before we had evolutionary psychology, ‘homo hypocritus‘, the subconscious and the modular mind people were still keenly observing human behaviour. Some were extremely insightful in noting our foibles, lies, hypocrisies and true motivations even if they couldn’t develop a unifying theory by which to explain them.

One of the wisest observers of human behaviour was the French writer La Rochefoucauld. If you haven’t yet read his maxims, you are in for a real treat. Below are some of the most cynical and enduring observations.

• What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.
• Hypocrisy is an homage that vice pays to virtue.
• Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.
• There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one’s skill.
• We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.
• How can we expect others to keep our secrets if we cannot keep them ourselves?
• We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.
• We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
• We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.
• Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
• Nothing prevents us being natural so much as the desire to appear so.
• In friendship and in love, one is often happier because of what one does not know than what one knows.
• Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
• In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.
• In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.
• We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.
• We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
• Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. (A nod to construal level theory.)
• Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
• The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.
• If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.
• Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters, even that of disinterestedness.
• To succeed in the world we do everything we can to appear successful already.
• Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.
• If we judge love by the majority of its results, it resembles hatred more than friendship.
• The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.
• Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
• It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.
• Everyone complains about his memory, and no one complains about his judgment.
• In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing.
• Nothing is given so profusely as advice.
• The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.
• When not prompted by vanity, we say little.
• Usually we only praise to be praised.
• The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.
• The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.
• The desire to appear clever often prevents one from being so.