Quotes by
Jean de La Bruyère |
1645-1696 , French writer
French satiric moralist who is best known for one work, Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec avec Les Caractères ou les moeurs de ce siècle (1688; The Characters, or the Manners of the Age, with The Characters of Theophrastus), which is considered to be one of the masterpieces of French literature. | 56 quotes | 2,435 visits |
Quotations
| • | Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love. 12 |
| • | Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. 8 |
| • | The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love. 7 |
| • | Anyone who has experienced a great love, does not care about friendship. 6 |
| • | The slave has only one master. The ambitious man has as masters all those who can contribute to his rise. 6 |
| • | The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest. 5 |
| • | I have heard some men say that they would like to be girls — and indeed beautiful girls — from the age of thirteen to twenty-two, and then become men. 5 |
| • | There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public speaking. 4 |
| • | We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much. 4 |
| • | It sometimes happens that the woman hides all the passion she feels for a man and the man pretends all the passion he does not have. 3 |
| • | Everything has been said, and we are more than 7000 years of human thought too late. |
| • | Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author. |
| • | An accumulation of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them. |
| • | It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character, that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. |
| • | From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. |
| • | True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it. |
| • | A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted, that riches, positions, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him. |
| • | Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men. |
| • | We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together. |
| • | The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself. |
| • | It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues. |
| • | There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others. |
| • | There are but three events in a man's life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live. |
| • | Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller. |
| • | Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable. |
| • | One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories. |
| • | Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect. |
| • | A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does. |
| • | I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity. |
| • | A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself. |
| • | All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone. |
| • | If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is the father. |
| • | Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty. |
| • | Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. |
| • | The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others. |
| • | There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery. |
| • | Don’t wait to be happy to laugh... You may die and never have laughed. |
| • | Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment. |
| • | The spendthrift robs his heirs, the miser robs himself. |
| • | A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were. |
| • | Women become attached to men by the intimacies they grant them; men are cured of their love by the same intimacies. |
| • | No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance. |
| • | 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. |
| • | Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property. |
| • | Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part. |
| • | A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others’. |
| • | Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do. |
| • | Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness. |
| • | Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings. |
| • | The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things. |
| • | We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us. |
| • | Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured. |
| • | Out of difficulties, grow miracles. |
| • | The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool. |
| • | One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched. |
| • | It is not possible to read a person at first sight. The virtues are usually covered by the veil of modesty, while the flaws wear the mask of hypocrisy. |
