Top 300 Jean de La Bruyère Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

202. “The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

203. “The nearer we come to great men the more clearly we see that they are only men. They rarely seem great to their valets.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

206. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

212. “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

213. “We should like those whom we love to receive all their happiness, or, if this were impossible, all their unhappiness from our hands.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

214. “The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple language; emphasis spoils them.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

221. “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

222. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

224. “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

225. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

227. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

232. “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

233. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

235. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

237. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

239. “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

240. “A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them. WYNDHAM LEWIS, Tarr Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other’s little failings.”

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

245. “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

246. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

248. “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

249. “All confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

250. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère