The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
772.
A criticism of _selfishness._ The involuntary ingenuousness of La Rochefoucauld, who believed that he was saying something bold, liberal, and paradoxical (in his days, of course, truth in psychological matters was something that astonished people) when he said. "_Les grandes âmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les âmes communes, mais seulement celles qui ont de plus grands desseins._" Certainly, John Stuart Mill (who calls Chamfort the _noble_ and philosophical La Rochefoucauld of the eighteenth century) recognises in him merely an astute and keen-sighted observer of all that which is the result of habitual selfishness in the human breast, and he adds: "A noble spirit is unable to see the necessity of a constant observation of _baseness_ and _contemptibility_, unless it were to show against what corrupting influences a lofty spirit and a noble character were able to triumph."
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.