La Rochefoucauld §laroch_076: There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, ...
Source: François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665) (laroch_076) · external_aligned
There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it. ["Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- An unseen seraph, we believe in thee-- A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,-- But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form as it should be." {--Lord Byron, }Childe Harold, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]
Witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15)
- manuscript_tradition: First edition, Paris 1665 — Barbin imprint
- critical_edition: Pleiade edition — Truchet (Gallimard, 1964)
- translation: Tancock translation (Penguin Classics, 1959)
- republication: Project Gutenberg — Maxims
- republication: Internet Archive — multiple editions