Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do.

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.

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.

As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.

Rarely do they appear great before their valets.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding.

People reveal their character even in the simplest things they do. Fools do not enter a room, nor leave it, nor sit down, nor rise, nor are they silent, nor do they stand up, like people of sense and understanding.

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.

Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.

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

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

There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.

Profane eloquence is transfered from the bar, where Le Maitre, Pucelle, and Fourcroy formerly practised it, and where it has become obsolete, to the Pulpit, where it is out of place.

Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

I would not like to see a person who is sober, moderate, chaste and just say that there is no God. They would speak disinterestedly at least, but such a person is not to be found.

Sudden love is latest cured.

We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.

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

How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!

Don't wait to be happy to laugh... You may die and never have laughed.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.

There 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.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.

Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, and gratitude; it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly, as he should be within.

To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

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

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

Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.

All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent.

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!

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

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.

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

As a man falls out of favour and his wealth declines, we discover for the first time the ridiculous aspects of his character, which were always there but which wealth and favour had concealed.

Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success; successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.

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.

It seems to me that the spirit of politeness is a certain attention in causing that, by our words and by our manners, others may be content with us and with themselves.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

There are only 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.

False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.

When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.