I've been perusing some of the Gore Vidal obits and tributes that have appeared since his death last Tuesday. One--"Gore Vidal quotes: 26 of the best"--includes some familiar items:
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
When I say "familiar," I do not mean that Vidal is one of those aphorists whose mind is known to legions who've never heard of him. More like Vidal, without attribution, disseminated the wisdom of the gimlet-eyed Frenchman Francois de LaRochefoucauld (1613-1680), whose maxims include:
Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas. ("In the adversity of our friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing.")
You perceive an affinity of thought and expression. Here's some more, without the original French.
1. We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.
2. We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
3. Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
4. To succeed in the world we do everything we can to appear successful already.
5. If we judge love by most of its results, it seems more akin to hate than to friendship.
6. Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
7. The mind is always the dupe of the heart.
8. Usually we only praise to be praised.
9. The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.
10. It is better to set one's mind to bearing the misfortunes that are happening than to think of those that may happen.
11. Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as a fear of the ill that may befall us.
12. Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually just inertia or lack of will-power.
13. The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire to receive even greater benefits.
14. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
15. We confess to small faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.
16. Mediocre minds usually dimiss anything that extends beyond their own understanding.
17. Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.
18. Our enemies come closer in their judgments about us than we ever do about ourselves.
19. We would scarcely wish zealously for things, if we really understood the things we wanted.
20. All the passions cause us to make mistakes, but love causes us to make the most ridiculous ones.
21. We would often be ashamed of our finest acts, if the world were aware of the motives behind them.
22. Ridicule hurts our honor more than does dishonor itself.
23. There are those who would never have been in love had they never heard about it.
24. We would hardly ever enjoy ourselves, if we never flattered ourselves.
25. Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over philosophy.
26. No matter how many nice things they say about us, we never learn anything new.
I don't know what's magical about 26, but, there, you have it: at least half a deck of the honest truth about us.
