There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating.
Jean de la BruyereSome young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their tones and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little.
Jean de la BruyereChildren 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.
Jean de la BruyereLet us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature.
Jean de la BruyereA 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.
Jean de la Bruyere