You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French . (December 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate , is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,211 articles in the main category , and specifying |topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Jacques Esprit]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Jacques Esprit}} to the talk page . For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation .

Jacques Esprit (22 October 1611, in Beziers ? 11 June 1677), sometimes called abbe Esprit despite never having been ordained a priest, was a French moralist and writer.

Biography [ edit ]

Born at Beziers , the son of a doctor from Toulouse , he joined his brother (an Oratorian priest) in Paris, where Jacques studied theology and letters from 1628 to 1634. He attended the salon of the marquise de Sable and entered the service of the duchesse de Longueville then of the duc de La Rochefoucauld . Paul Pellisson wrote: "He had a happy appearance, a delicacy of spirit, an amiable disposition, playful, and with much facility in speaking well and writing well ^[1] ". His talents were noticed by Pierre Seguier , who rewarded him with a pension and made him a conseiller d'Etat in 1636. He was elected a member of the Academie francaise in 1639.

Falling into disgrace with Seguier in 1644, he took refuge in the Oratorian seminary. The prince de Conti visited and befriended him, lodging him in his hotel and giving him 15,000 livres with which to get married. When the prince was made governor of the Languedoc in 1660, Jacques Esprit accompanied him and served him as intendant. On his benefactor's death in 1666, he returned to live in his birthplace of Beziers, where he educated his three daughters and edited a single work, ^[2] La Faussete des vertus humaines , and it was there that he died.

La Faussete des vertus humaines [ edit ]

La Faussete des vertus humaines went through many editions and was translated into English in London in 1706 as Discourses on the Deceitfulness of Humane Virtues .

List of works [ edit ]

• La Faussete des vertus humaines (2 volumes, 1678 ; 1693 ; 1709). Online text . Reissue: Pascal Quignard , La Faussete des vertus humaines, precedee de Traite sur Esprit , Aubier, Paris, 1996.
• L'Art de connoistre les hommes (1702). Edition abregee de La Faussete des vertus humaines .

References [ edit ]

Bibliography [ edit ]

• Henri Berna, Pensees, maximes et sentences de Jacques Esprit : Considerations sur les vertus ordinaires , Ellipse, Geneve, 2003.