Jean de la bruyere quotes

The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others.

Envy and hatred go together. Mutually strengthened by the fact pursue the same object.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

Some men promise to keep your secret and yet reveal it without knowing they are doing so; they do not wag their lips, and yet they are understood; it is read on their brow and in their eyes; it is seen through their breast; they are transparent.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.

One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.

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

A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.

No road is to long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it

The reason that women do not love one another is - men.

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.

When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it we rob ourselves.

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.

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.

We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.

They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

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.

A man may doubt of God's existence when he is in good health, just as he may doubt whether his relation with a harlot is sinful. When he falls ill, when dropsy develops, he leaves his concubine, and he believes in God.

If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man.

A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account.

Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.

He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself sufficiently rewarded.

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

It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.

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.

A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'

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.

Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.

We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.

Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.

For some people, speaking and giving offence are one and the same thing. They are spiteful and bitter; their style is infused with gall and wormwood; mockery, abuse and insults flow from their lips like spittle.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.

Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.

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

What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?

The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.

It is in vain to ridicule a rich fool, for the laughers will be on his side.

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

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.

A long disease seems to be a halting place between life and death, that death itself may be a comfort to those who die and to those who are left behind.

There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.

A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.

As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.

A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed, nor attempts to govern others.

A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.

If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is the father.

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.

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.

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.

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.

Men fall from great fortune because of the same shortcomings that led to their rise.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

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

When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.

Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others; already they are men.

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

It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.

There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and willfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.

A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.

A man can deceive a woman by his sham attachment to her provided he does not have a real attachment elsewhere.

A fool is one whom simpletons believe to be a man on merit. [Fr., Un fat celui que les sots croient un homme de merite.]

Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.

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

Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.

Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.

To express truth is to write naturally, forcibly, and delicately.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.

A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.

Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.

A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich.

The flatterer does not think highly enough of himself or of others.

Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.

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

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

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

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

Friendship can exist between persons of different sexes, without any coarse or sensual feelings; yet a woman always looks upon a man as a man, and so a man will look upon a woman as a woman.

A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.

Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis; but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.

There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.

Women become attached to men by the intimacies they grant them; men are cured of their love by the same intimacies.

There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

We all covet wealth, but not its perils.

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.

Born merely for the purpose of digestion.

It is difficult for a proud man ever to forgive a person who has found him at fault, and who has good grounds for complaining of him; his pride is not assuaged till he has regained the advantages he lost and put the other person in the wrong.

The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love.

Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.

If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?

A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.

If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.

Most men spend the first half of their lives making the second half miserable.

Let 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.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

False modesty is the refinement of vanity. It is a lie.

The doctors allow one to die, the charlatans kill.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves.

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.

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.

If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexion, and their faces to become as fiery and as leaden as they make them with the red and the paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the most wretched creatures on earth.

A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd.

It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.

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

When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death.

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. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.

A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.

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

The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.

You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?

The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.

Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.

Most men spend the best part of their lives making the remaining part wretched.