Top 300 Jean de La Bruyère Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It’s motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

52. “Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

53. “A faithless woman, if known to be such by the person concerned, is but faithless ; if she is believed faithful, she is treacherous.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

56. “Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can’t imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

58. “There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

60. “We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

61. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

63. “Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

64. “A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

65. “There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

67. “There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one’s own industry or by the stupidity of others.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

68. “The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

69. “No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends as to give them no cause to miss him less.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

70. “There exist some evils so terrible and some misfortunes so horrible that we dare not think of them, whilst their very aspect makes us shudder; but if they happen to fall on us, we find ourselves stronger than we imagined, we grapple with our ill luck, and behave better than we expected we should.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

71. “Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

72. “There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

73. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

76. “There are some who speak one moment before they think.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

78. “The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

79. “A man’s worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

80. “The reason that women do not love one another is – men.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

81. “There are but three events which concern man: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

83. “Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

84. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

86. “I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

87. “We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

88. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

89. “Caprice in women often infringes upon the rules of decency.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

90. “Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

92. “Genius and great abilities are often wanting; sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done; others for what they would have done.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

93. “He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

94. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

95. “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!”

— Jean de La Bruyère

96. “To delay is injustice.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

97. “Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

98. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

99. “The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food, – they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

100. “The greatest part of mankind employ their first years to make their last miserable.”

— Jean de La Bruyère