Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.
Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés.
Original text (French)
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Epigraph. Note: "This epigraph, which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the Maxims of the first edition, 1665; it is omitted from the second and third, and reappears for the first time in the fourth edition at the head of the Reflections". Aime Martin, editor, Bartlett's Quotations, 1919 edition.