author
François duc de La Rochefoucauld
1613–1680
Best known for the sharp, unsettling brilliance of Maxims, this 17th-century French nobleman turned court intrigue and hard experience into some of literature’s most memorable reflections on human motives. His writing is brief, elegant, and often surprisingly modern in its skepticism.
3 Audiobooks
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
by François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales
by François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Maximes
by François duc de La Rochefoucauld
About the author
Born in Paris in 1613, François de La Rochefoucauld was a French aristocrat, soldier, and writer associated with the classical age of French literature. He took part in the political upheavals of the Fronde and was wounded several times during his military and political career before gradually returning to favor at court.
Those turbulent experiences helped shape the cool, unsparing view of human nature that made him famous. He is best remembered for Maxims and for his Memoirs, works in which he distilled ambition, vanity, self-interest, and love into short observations that have remained influential for centuries.
La Rochefoucauld died in Paris in 1680. His reputation rests on the clarity and wit of his moral reflections, which still feel fresh because they turn grand ideas into concise, piercing truths about ordinary behavior.