Book of a lifetime: Maxims by La Rochefoucauld

From The Independent archive: Alain de Botton on ‘Maxims’ by La Rochefoucauld

Francois de La Rochfoucauld circa 1650 (Getty)

There’s a widespread view that when someone is sad, what they most need is cheerfulness. But in truth, what they need is a dose of pessimism so powerful that their own problems will come to seem minor in comparison.

It is for such relief that we should turn to one of the darkest, most cynical books ever written – a slim volume from 17th-century France that Voltaire remarked was the book that had most powerfully shaped the character of the French people, giving them a taste for psychological reflection, darkness and precision: La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims.

Behind almost every one of these maxims, or aphorisms, there lies a challenge to an ordinary, flattering view of ourselves. La Rochefoucauld repeatedly reveals the debt that nice behaviour owes to its evil shadow. He shows that we are never far from being vain, arrogant, selfish and petty – and never nearer to those traits than when we trust in our own goodness.