Top 300 Jean de La Bruyère Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse ; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

202. “Eminent station makes great men more great, and little ones less.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

203. “Rarely do they appear great before their valets.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

205. “We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

209. “For a long time visits among lovers and professions of love are kept up through habit, after their behavior has plainly proved that love no longer exists.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

210. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

211. “It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

213. “Nothing makes us better understand what trifling things Providence thinks He bestows on men in granting them wealth, money, dignities, and other advantages, than the manner in which they are distributed and the kind of men who have the largest share.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

214. “It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

215. “Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

216. “Favor exalts a man above his equals, but his dismissal from that favor places him below them.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

217. “Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

218. “It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

219. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

220. “Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own – one of the heart, the other of the mind.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

222. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

223. “Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kinds of writings; it is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is least expected.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

224. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

225. “It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

226. “They that have lived a single day have lived an age.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

227. “We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

228. “Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

229. “It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

230. “Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

231. “In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbor to an honest one, and a rich man is as little removed from a knave.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

232. “How many men are like trees, already strong and full grown, which are transplanted into some gardens, to the astonishment of those people who behold them in these fine spots, where they never saw them grow, and who neither know their beginning nor their progress!”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

234. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

236. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

237. “The fear of old age disturbs us, yet we are not certain of becoming old.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

238. “Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

239. “We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

241. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

242. “Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

244. “A man must be completely wanting in intelligence if he does not show it when actuated by love, malice, or necessity.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

245. “To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

246. “Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness buries it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

247. “He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

248. “During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue’s sake.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

249. “I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man’s money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

250. “The very impossibility which I find to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.”

— Jean de La Bruyère