Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 1, 2025
He hated conscientious subterfuges which equalize good and evil. He looked upon "gloire" and "vertu" as the two great motive forces of a sane and beneficent life. In this he was unique; Voltaire notes that Vauvenargues soared, in an age of mediocrities, un siècle des petitesses, by his refusal to adopt the spirit of the world.
His nature had such depth and quality that the perpetual untowardness of circumstances left no evil print upon him; hardship made him not sour, but patient and wise, and there is no surer sign of noble temper. The sufferings and bereavements of war were not his only trials. Vauvenargues was beset throughout the whole of his short life with the sordid and humiliating embarrassments of narrow means.
In the case of Pascal, we may question the fact, but it is recorded that when at last Malebranche was persuaded to read Descartes' "Traité de l'homme," it excited him so violently as to bring on palpitation of the heart. Such are the dangers of a retarded study of the classics. Vauvenargues was no less inflammable.
'Women, for example, 'have ordinarily more vanity than temperament, and more temperament than virtue' which is fairly true of all human beings, and in so far as it is true, describes men just as exactly and no more so as it describes women. In truth, Vauvenargues felt too seriously about conduct and character to go far in this direction.
As soon as his health had recovered a little from the horror of the Bohemian campaign, Vauvenargues took the step of writing to Voltaire, then a stranger, for his opinion on that crying question, the relative greatness of Corneille and of Racine, a question to all Frenchmen like that between predestination and free-will to Milton's rebel angels.
Besides this rarer poetic method, there is what may be styled the diplomatist's method; it classifies characters objectively, according to the kinds of outer conduct in which they manifest themselves, and according to the best ways of approaching and dealing with them. The second of these describes the spirit in which Vauvenargues observed men.
You will not find any savants there, but you will find men of the right sort. Do you wish to be the first pedant of your race?" There were but two alternatives for a lad of his class who had to make a living, the Church and the Army. For Vauvenargues there could be no question, he was born to be a soldier.
These were prominent among the considerations which filled the mind of Vauvenargues when, at the age of twenty-nine, he saw himself driven out of military life by the rapid aggravation of ill-health. His thoughts turned to diplomacy.
The career was not yet open to the talents, and in the memorial which Vauvenargues drew up he dwelt less on his conduct than on his birth, being careful to show that he had an authentic ancestor who was Governor of Hyères in the early part of the fourteenth century. But the only road to employment lay through the Court.
Vauvenargues had been living in a dream of military glory, and had been thirsting to serve his country in the loftiest and most responsible capacities. His very physical appearance now completed the bankruptcy of his wishes, for he was attacked with the smallpox, which disfigured him so badly that, to use his own expression, "it prevented his soul from appearing in his features."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking