Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues

He died at age 31, in broken health, having published the year prior—anonymously—a collection of essays and aphorisms with the encouragement of Voltaire, his friend.

[6] In 1740, he met a fellow officer, an adolescent about nine years his junior, Paul Hippolyte Emmanuel de Seytres, who became a permanent object of the author's devotion.

The two were part of the disastrous Siege of Prague (1742), the expedition to Bohemia in support of Frederick II of Prussia's designs on Silesia, in which the French were abandoned by their ally.

In December, when half the army was conducted in a strategic retreat, his legs froze, and though he spent a long time in hospital at Nancy he never completely recovered.

[8] He was encouraged to turn to literature by his friend the marquis of Mirabeau, author of L'Ami des Hommes, and father of the statesman.

Wishing to enter the diplomatic service, for two years he made applications to ministers and to king Louis XV himself.

In 1746 he published—anonymously—his sole volume, a collection of writing including Introduction à la connaissance de l'esprit humain, with Reflexions and Maximes appended.

A century after his death, Schopenhauer favorably quoted several of Vauvenargues's sayings, including: "la clarté est la bonne foi des philosophes" [clarity is the good faith of philosophers], from Reflections and Maxims, 729, and: "personne n'est sujet a plus de fautes que ceux qui n'agissent que par reflexion" [none are so prone to make mistakes as those who act only on reflection].