False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. 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.
Jean de la BruyereToo great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.
Jean de la BruyereThere are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.
Jean de la BruyereOne should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.
Jean de la Bruyere