French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatical.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
Women become attached to men through the favours they grant them, but men are cured of their love through those same favours.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
If life be wretched, it is hard to bear it; if it be happy, it is horrible to lose it ; both come to the same thing.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Les Caracteres
The favor of princes does not preclude the existence of merit, and yet does not prove that it exists.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Les Caractères
The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely; to those above him.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
A great mind is above insults, injustice, grief, and raillery, and would be invulnerable were it not open to compassion.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis; but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbor to an honest one, and a rich man is as little removed from a knave.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same thing.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
Women are at little trouble to express what they do not feel; but men are still at less to express what they do feel.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
I am not astonished that men who lean, as it were, on an atom, should stumble at the smallest efforts they make for discovering the truth ; that, being so short-sighted, they do not reach beyond the heavens and the stars, to contemplate God Himself.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Freethinkers", Les Caractères
All confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères