French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
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
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
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
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
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
"Of Freethinkers", Les Caractères
It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Les Caracteres
The fear of old age disturbs us, yet we are not certain of becoming old.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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
"Of Freethinkers", Les Caractères
There are certain people who so ardently and so passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other's little failings.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
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
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately ; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", 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
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
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères