Full Title: Moral Maxims: By the Duke de la Roche Foucault. Translated from the French. With notes. London: Printed for A. Millar, opposite Katharine Street, in the Strand, MDCCXLIX.
DECEIT
XC.
We can’t bear to be deceived by our Enemies, and betrayed by our Friends; yet are often content to be so served by ourselves.
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XCI.
“Tis as easy to deceive ourselves without our perceiving it, as ’tis difficult to deceive others without their perceiving it.
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XCII.
A Resolution never to deceive exposes a Man to be often deceived.
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XCIII.
The Dulness of People is sometimes a sufficient Security against the Attack of an artful Man.
Bion used to say, “Twas no easy Thing to stick soft Cheese on a Hook. Diogen. Laert.
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XCIV.
He who imagines he can do without the World deceives himself much; but he who fancies the World can’t do without him is yet more mistaken.
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XCV.
In Love the Deceit almost always outstrips the Distrust.
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XCVI.
We are sometimes less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived.
And we may cry out, with Horace’s Madman,
—–“Pol me occidistis, amici,
Non servatis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.”
You have undone me, ill-judging Friends, in robbing me of such Pleasure; and in depriving me, against my Consent, of so delicious a Deception.
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XCVII.
When our Friends have deceived us, we have a Right to be indifferent to their Professions of Friendship; but we ought always to retain a Sensibility for their Misfortunes.
Eighteenth-Century Reading Room 