Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.

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.

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit.

There are some souls so base and filthy that they love gain and interest as noble souls love fame and virtue, knowing one pleasure only, that of making money or of not losing it; anxious and avid for their ten per cent; entirely preoccupied with what is owed them; forever concerned about the depreciation or discredit of money; buried, and as it were engulfed, amid contracts, title-deeds and parchments. Such people are neither parents, friends, citizens or Christians, nor, perhaps, even men; they merely have money.

If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us, which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it; so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

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.

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.

To forget someone means to think of him.

A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.

He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations.

Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.

The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.

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

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

This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.

A man may have intelligence enough to excel in a particular thing and lecture on it, and yet not have sense enough to know he ought to be silent on some other subject of which he has but a slight knowledge; if such an illustrious man ventures beyond the bounds of his capacity, he loses his way and talks like a fool.

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.

One faithful Friend is enough for a man's self, 'tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can't have too many for the sake of others.

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.

Women are extreme; they are better than men, or worse.

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

To be among people one loves, that's sufficient; to dream, to speak to them, to be silent among them, to think of indifferent things; but among them, everything is equal.

Cheats easily believe others as bad as themselves; there is no deceiving them, nor do they long deceive.

It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.

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

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.

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.

A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.

It is because of men that women dislike one another.

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.

Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.

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

Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.

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

It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

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

A tall, well-built man with a deep chest and broad shoulders can carry a heavy burden with ease and unconcern, and still keep one hand free; a dwarf would be crushed by half that weight. Thus lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.

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.

Favor exalts a man above his equals, but his dismissal from that favor places him below them.

Love and friendship exclude each other.

If you wish to be held in esteem, you must ssociate only with those who estimable.

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.