Pure Valour, if there were any such thing, would consist in the doing of that without witnesses, which it were able to do, if all the world were to be spectators thereof.

[La pure valeur (s’il y en avait) serait de faire sans témoins ce qu’on est capable de faire devant le monde.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶216 (1665-1678) [tr. Davies (1669), ¶97]
    (Source)

(Source (French, 1665 ed., ¶229)). In the final edition (1678, ¶216), the original French had been modified to:

La parfaite valeur est de faire sans témoins ce qu’on seroit capable de faire devant tout le monde.

Alternate translations:

True Valour would do all that, when alone, that it could do, if all the World were by.
[tr. Stanhope (1694), ¶217]

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses all we should be capable of doing before the whole world.
[pub. Donaldson (1783), ¶431]

Perfect valour consists in doing, without witness, all that we should be capable of doing before the whole world.
[ed. Carville (1835), ¶367]

Perfect valor is to do unwitnessed what we should be capable of doing before all the world.
[ed. Gowens (1851), ¶225]

Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.
[tr. Bund/Friswell (1871)]

Perfect valor accomplishes without witnesses what anyone could do before the eyes of the world.
[tr. Heard (1917), ¶221]

Perfect courage consists in doing unobserved what what we could do in the eyes of the world.
[tr. Stevens (1939)]

Perfect valour is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.
[tr. FitzGibbon (1957)]

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
[tr. Kronenberger (1959)]

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses what one would be capable of doing before the world at large.
[tr Tancock (1959)]

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.
[tr. Whichello (2016)]

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
[Source]


 
Added on 15-Jul-22 | Last updated 19-Jan-24
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