François de La Rochefoucauld
La Rochefoucauld, Francois, Duc de (1613-80). French writer. He spent some 25 years in politics and war, participating in the Fronde uprising of 1648. His major work, Maxims (1665), consists of a collection of terse re-flections on life and on moral issues; it was later revised to contain over 500 maxims. La Rochefoucauld died of the cumulative effects of gout.
