Yesterday, in honor of La Rochefoucauld’s 400th birthday, I uploaded a page in his honor. Here is the blurb displayed in the left-hand margin, if you’re not sure yet whether you want to click on the link:
“This site displays a random Maxime from the 5th edition of Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, 1678, the last one overseen by the author: 505 in all, counting the unnumbered épigraphe. Press the button to see another.
“I will eventually add the other 130+ omitted from the 5th edition, as well as a cross-referencer that will allow readers to see any maxime with all of its textual variants, and in all of the different contexts in which it is found in the early editions and manuscripts.
“In the mean time, this should suffice to celebrate La Rochefoucauld’s 400th birthday: today, September 15, 2013.”
I hope all of my readers will have the self-control to resist pushing the button over and over and over for hours, like a monkey, in one of those dismal experiments, that receives a jolt of cocaine or direct stimulation of the pleasure centers of his brain every time he presses the button in his cage.
