Top 300 Jean de La Bruyère Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

252. “A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

253. “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

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

255. “When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there’s as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a VIzor and a Face.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

256. “The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

257. “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

258. “The duty of a judge is to administer justice, but his practice is to delay it.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

259. “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

260. “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

261. “As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

262. “High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

263. “How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!”

— Jean de La Bruyère

264. “Whatever is certain in death is slightly alleviated by what is not so infallible; the time when it shall happen is undefined, but it is more or less connected with the infinite, and what we call eternity.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

265. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

267. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

269. “I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

270. “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!”

— Jean de La Bruyère

271. “A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

272. “What is certain in death is somewhat softened by what is uncertain; it is an indefiniteness in the time, which holds a certain relation to the infinite, and what is called eternity.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

273. “I am not astonished that men who lean, as it were, on an atom, should stumble at the smallest efforts they make for discovering the truth ; that, being so short-sighted, they do not reach beyond the heavens and the stars, to contemplate God Himself.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

274. “For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the humblest of husbands can bear; she should mercifully choose between the two.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

277. “There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

279. “If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

281. “The State not seldom tolerates a comparatively great evil to keep out millions of lesser ills and inconveniences which otherwise would be inevitable and without remedy.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

282. “We all covet wealth, but not its perils.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

283. “It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

284. “It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing; if it is not covered with flowers, with fruit trees and grains, it produces briers and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

285. “Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

286. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

287. “We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

288. “It requires more than mere genius to be an author.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

292. “He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

293. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère

295. “We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

296. “Women are at little trouble to express what they do not feel; but men are still at less to express what they do feel.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

297. “A man of moderate Understanding, thinks he writes divinely: A man of good Understanding, thinks he writes reasonably.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

298. “Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

299. “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.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

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

— Jean de La Bruyère