French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
A great mind is above insults, injustice, grief, and raillery, and would be invulnerable were it not open to compassion.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
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
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Love begins with love ; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
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
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
False modesty is the last refinement of vanity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
A man of variable mind is not one man, but several men in one; he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners; he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now; he is his own successor.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the greatest triumph is to conquer a man's own interests.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style, by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions ; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Pulpit", Les Caractères
It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform ourselves to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely; to those above him.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
The critics, or those who, thinking themselves so, decide deliberately and decisively about all public representations, group and divide themselves into different parties, each of whom admires a certain poem or a certain music and damns all others, urged on by a wholly different motive than public interest or justice. The ardour with which they defend their prejudices damages the opposite party as well as their own set. These men discourage poets and musicians by a thousand contradictions, and delay the progress of arts and sciences, by depriving them of the advantages to be obtained by that emulation and freedom which many excellent masters, each in their own way and according to their own genius, might display in the execution of some very fine works.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères