Vauvenargues - Oeuvres morales de Vauvenargues - 1874

New edition complete in three volumes (over 300 pages each) and published in Paris by E. Plon et Cie, in 1874. Bound in half lambskin, spine with raised bands decorated with gilded fleurons in the compartments and two title labels. Gilt topstain.
A well-preserved set.

Luc de Clapiers, marquis of Vauvenargues, born on 5 August 1715 in Aix-en-Provence and died May 28, 1747, in Paris, is a French moralistic and aphorist writer.

Vauvenargues has left few writings, however they have generated considerable interest. In the introduction, the Réflexions and in other minor fragments, he gives his shattered thoughts on philosophical and moral questions, writes literary criticism, although he shines especially as a moralist. His vocabulary is popular and simple and his ideas were badly organized in complicated systems. His true strength was to express, in a quite epigrammatic style, the results of his thorough observations of men’s behaviours and motivations.

The main difference between Vauvenargues and one of his predecessors such as La Rochefoucauld is that the first one has a high idea of mankind, and that he his more prone to stoicism than to Epicurean theories. He has been qualified as a “modern stoic”. (Wikipedia).