
“The highest form of vanity is love of fame.”
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 185.
“The highest form of vanity is love of fame.”
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society
19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
“Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.”
"Pensées Tirées des Premières Éditions," Réflexions: Ou, Sentences Et Maximes Morales de La Rochefoucauld (1822)
Later Additions to the Maxims
Speech in Cleveland http://books.google.com/books?id=o3j10P6YFZIC&pg=PA1090&dq=%22nation's+honor+is+dearer+than+the+nation's+comfort%22 (January 1916)
1910s
"An Essay upon False Vertue", p. 263
Essays Upon Several Subjects (1716)
“It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.”
Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society, Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.