La Rochefoucauld §laroch_021: Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt fo...
Source: François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665) (laroch_021) · external_aligned
Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes. [See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]
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