Jean De La Bruyere Quotes

Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice; there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.

Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.

A lovely countenance is the fairest of all sights, and the sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of her whom we love.

It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities.

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing; if it is not covered with flowers, with fruit trees and grains, it produces briers and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.

It would be a kind of ferocity to reject indifferently all sorts of praise. One should be glad to have that which comes from good men who praise in sincerity things that are really praiseworthy.

A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women, forgetting that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young now only makes her look older.

There is what is called the highway to posts and honor, and there is a cross and by way, which is much the shortest.

High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.

The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves.

There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetratable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heartm speaks and acts against his feelings.

He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself sufficiently rewarded.

A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.

A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Friendship * * * is a long time in forming, it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity.

A woman with eyes only for one person, or with eyes always averted from him, creates exactly the same impression.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own
one of the heart, the other of the mind.

The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.

We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.

The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
[Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]

He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.

The duty of a judge is to administer justice, but his practice is to delay it

The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.

Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.

Logic is the art of making truth prevail.

Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.

A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them. WYNDHAM LEWIS, Tarr Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other's little failings.

If a secret is revealed, the person who has confided it to another is to be blamed.

Impertinent wits are a kind of insect which are in everybody's way and plentiful in all countries.

We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better.

The court is like a palace built of marble; I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polished people.

The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains.

We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.

The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you. Most men would rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded.

A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.

Courtly manners are contagious; they are caught at Versailles.

Physiognomy is not a guide that has been given us by which to judge of the character of men: it may only serve us for conjecture.
[Fr., La physionomie n'est pas une regle qui nous soit donnee pour juger des hommes; elle nous peut servir de conjecture.]

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.

It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of praise; we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.

When we have run through all forms of government, without partiality to that we were born under, we are at a loss with which to side; they are all a compound of good and evil. It is therefore most reasonable and safe to value that of our own country above all others, and to submit to it.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author.

What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth.
[Fr., Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires ou des personnes est souvent la verite.]

A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd.

It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.

Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.

Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.

Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.

I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.

Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.

We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.

We are afraid of the old age which we may never attain.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.

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.

The reason that women do not love one another is - men.

It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.

A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does.

The nearer we approach great men, the clearer we see that they are men.

A lofty birth or a large fortune portend merit, and cause it to be the sooner noticed.

The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.

It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.

Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.

Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.

It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man.

Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.

The unnamed should not be mistaken for the nonexistent.

Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.

Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.

That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect

The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.

I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.

A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.

A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.

The flatterer does not think highly enough of himself or of others.

No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.

Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.

When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it we rob ourselves.

Laziness begat wearisomeness, and this put men in quest of diversions, play and company, on which however it is a constant attendant; he who works hard, has enough to do with himself otherwise.

As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.

Women run to extremes, they are either better or worse than men.

We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time.

The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.

An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all.

Women are at little trouble to express what they do not feel; but men are still at less to express what they do feel.

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it.

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.