maxims

as i was telling jared yesterday, i'm into these maxims (la rochefoucauld) - i have them in a somber grey book from the berkeley public library that gets weirder the more i look at it - cover illustration is a laughing cherub pointing/mocking at an outraged bust of seneca/cicero/(?) (someone like that).

here are some:

1. What we take for virtues are often only a collection of various actions and interests which fortune or own own industry knows how to arrange; and it is not always through valor and chastity that men are valiant and that women are chaste.

269. There is hardly any man clever enough to know all the evil he does.

19. We all have strength enough to endure the pains of others.

459. There are several remedies which cure love, but none is infallible.

14. Men are not only subject to losing the memory of benefits and injuries, they even hate those who benefited them, and cease to hate those who have committed outrages against them. The diligence of rewarding the good and taking revenge on the bad appears to them as a servitude into which they have difficulty delivering themselves.