Collected Maxims and Other Reflections

''Our virtues are, most often, only vices in disguise.''Deceptively brief and insidiously easy to read, La Rochefoucauld''s shrewd, unflattering analyses of human behaviour have influenced writers, thinkers, and public figures as various as Voltaire, Proust, de Gaulle, Nietzsche, and Conan Doyle. The author gave himself the following advice: ''The reader''s best policy is to assume that none of th...