La Rochefoucauld, FRANÇOIS, DUC DE, was born at Paris on the 15th September 1613. He belonged to an old family, and his father was made a duke by Louis XIII. in 1622. During his youth he was known as the Prince de Marsillac. His education was somewhat neglected. He joined the army when a boy, and was present in his seventeenth year at the siege of Casal. His life, says Sainte-Beuve, might be divided into four periods, to each of which might be assigned the name of a woman—viz. Mme de Chevreuse, Mme de Longueville, Mme de Sablé, and Mme de la Fayette. As a young man he showed an ultra-romantic temperament. Under the influence of Mme de Chevreuse he devoted himself to the cause of the queen in opposition to Richelieu, and became entangled in a series of love-adventures and political intrigues, the result being that on the flight of Mme de Chevreuse he was forced to live in exile at Verteuil from 1639 to 1642. About 1645 he formed a liaison with the beautiful Mme de Longueville. He then joined the Frondeurs and was severely wounded at the siege of Paris. He was very unlucky in his political schemings. His father died in 1650, and in 1652 he was again badly wounded, whereupon he retired to the country to restore his health, which had been shattered by twenty years of battle and adventure. On Mazarin's death in 1661 he repaired to the court of Louis XIV., and about the same time began his liaison with Mme de Sablé. A surreptitious edition of the Mémoires, which he had written while living in retirement, was published by the Elzevirs in 1662, and as the book gave wide offence he disavowed its authorship, without, however, finding many to accept his denial. His Réflexions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales appeared in 1665. No book, said Voltaire, did more to form the taste of the nation. The first edition contained 316 pensées, which were afterwards expanded to about 700. His last years were brightened by his friendship with Mme de la Fayette, which lasted until he died at Paris on March 17, 1680. In his early life he had married Andrée de Vivonne, by whom he had five sons and three daughters.
The Maxims vary in length from two or three lines to about half a page. For brevity, clearness, and finish of style they could hardly be excelled. Their writer did not seek to play the part of the mere epigrammatist, though he has now and then sacrificed his thought for the sake of striking and pointed expression. A vein of melancholy runs through the book. It is the work of a man of singularly keen and subtle intellect, who was deeply versed in life, and had formed independent judgments on most of its relations. He was a remorseless analyst of man's character. 'Everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest'—such is usually said to be the keynote of all his philosophy. That is not, however, exactly correct, though it is true of the book in the main. La Rochefoucauld tracks out self-love in its most elusive forms and under its cunningest disguises. He lays it bare with the most piercing insight and pitiless trenchancy. But he occasionally overstates his case against humanity, through forgetfulness of the fact that self-love is not the only motive by which men are impelled. Read in certain moods, the Maxims seem a crushing exposure of man's baseness and folly; read in others, they seem little better than a morbid libel on human nature. But of their writer's depth and keenness as a thinker there can be no more question than there can of his wonderful mastery of terse and incisive phrase.
See French Life by Bourdeau (1895), and the article on 'La Rochefoucauld' included in Sainte-Beuve's Portraits de Femmes. The best edition of his works is that by Gilbert and Gourdault (3 vols. 1868-84), in the series of Grands Écrivains de la France.