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Maxims are concise statements of general truths or conduct rules. Many famous maxims originated in Rome, and the genre was popular in 17th-century France. Examples include Blaise Pascal’s Pensees and François duc de La Rochefoucauld’s Reflexes. Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu’s separation of powers maxim influenced the Founding Fathers.
A maxim is a succinct statement of a general truth or rule of conduct. There are several famous sets of maxims from which individual maxims are drawn which are well known and in frequent use.
The Latin maxim may be the starting point of the genre. Many maxims that are widely recognized in English originated in Rome. Here are some samples:
One healthy mind in one healthy body. (A healthy mind in a healthy body. Juvenal)
Nothing comes from nothing. (De nihilo nihil. Lucretius)
The result justifies the facts. (or The end justifies the means: Exitus acta probat. Ovid)
As long as there is life there is hope. (A patient is said to have hope while there is a soul. Cicero)
The collection of maxims was a particularly popular genre in 17th-century France, and we have three very famous works from this period. Blaise Pascal’s Pensees of 1660 is a well-known collection of French maxims. The advice given in his nineteenth maxim, “The last thing you decide in writing a book is what you should put first,” will resonate with many students, who have been advised to write the first paragraph of their essays after that the rest is complete.
Reflexes; o Moral phrases and maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld is another collection of this type, published for the first time in 1692. The epigraph of his collection – “Our virtues are more frequent but our vices are masked” – is a maxim that expresses a concept that exists in many different analyzes of human behavior over the centuries. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, portrayed moderation as a virtue and excess and deficiency as the same characteristic as vice. In recent times we have the Enneagram, which proposes that various personality types, for example, the Giver, can manifest themselves under unhealthy as well as healthy. ways.
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu included maxims in his work Esprit des Lois, which appears in English as The Spirit of Laws. It is his separation of powers maxim that the Founding Fathers refer to in The Federalist Paper Number 47, as an important foundation of their views and instrumental in shaping our government.
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