François de La Rochefoucauld

French author of maxims and memoirs (1613-1680)

Source-basedStable

Lived 1613–1680, aged 67France

France WritersWriter / Author

Fame14.2
Momentum0.0
France rank#125
Writers rank#151
Wikipedia10K

Wikipedia
50 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in France
#125
Writers
Era
1613–1680
Aged 67

Summary

Updated 2026-05-29

Seventeenth-century French aristocrat who made a career out of puncturing human vanity with Maximes, a collection of cynical one-liners about love, virtue, and friendship. His take: everyone's basically selfish, they're just lying about it.

Biography

About

François de La Rochefoucauld, 2nd Duke of La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac was an accomplished French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of Maximes and Memoirs, the only two works of his dense literary œuvre published. His Maximes portrays the callous nature of human conduct, with a cynical attitude towards putative virtue and avowals of affection, friendship, love, and loyalty. Leonard Tancock regards Maximes as "one of the most deeply felt, most intensely lived texts in French literature", with his "experience, his likes and dislikes, sufferings and petty spit…

Profile