François duc de La Rochefoucauld

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) was a French nobleman, soldier and moralist. He spent his youth in intrigues against Richelieu and Mazarin, fought on the losing side in the civil wars of the Fronde, and was nearly blinded by a musket shot at the battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in 1652. Retiring from politics, he frequented the salons of Madame de Sablé and Madame de Lafayette and composed the Maxims, first published in 1665 and revised through five editions, a few hundred sentences on self-love, vanity and the disguises of virtue that remain the model of the French aphorism. He also left memoirs of the Fronde.