Success Quote by Luc de Clapiers

There is a sly tenderness in Vauvenargues's claim that weakness can do the social work we usually reserve for goodness. He doesn't romanticize vice; he points to a quieter reality: people rarely connect through their best selves. Virtue can feel like a performance, a pedestal, a standard you either meet or you don't. Failings, by contrast, are intimate. They flatten the hierarchy. Confession and complicity create a shared climate where pride relaxes and honesty becomes possible.

The line is engineered to puncture moral vanity. "As closely as could virtue itself" is the knife twist: the author grants virtue its full prestige, then calmly notes that it has competition. The subtext is Enlightenment-era disillusionment with heroic morality. Vauvenargues, writing in a culture obsessed with reputation, salons, and the etiquette of honor, understands that social bonds are often forged not by ideals but by mutual need. A flaw admitted is a passport into the human club; a flaw observed and forgiven is an alliance.

There's also a pragmatic ethics here, less about absolution than about how communities actually cohere. People protect one another's secrets. They recognize themselves in each other's compromises. Sometimes they even build entire friendships on the relief of not having to be impressive. The quote doesn't excuse failing; it explains its adhesive power. If virtue is a banner, failure is a handshake: messy, private, and hard to deny.