Of all the French epigrammatic writers, La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) is at once the most widely known and the most distinguished. Voltaire said: "One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the [French] nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims by Fran?ois, duc de La Rochefoucauld; though there is scarcely more than one truth running through the book-that 'self-love is the motive...