La Rochefoucauld §laroch_447: Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed.
Source: François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665) (laroch_447) · external_aligned
Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed. [Honour has its supreme laws, to which education is bound to conform....Those things which honour forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do not concur in the prohibition, and those it commands are more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be commanded by law.--Montesquieu, {The Spirit Of Laws, }b. 4, c. ii.]
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