Top 100 La Bruyere Quotes
#1. Cheats easily believe others as bad as themselves; there is no deceiving them, nor do they long deceive.
Jean De La Bruyere
#2. The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
Jean De La Bruyere
#3. A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.
Jean De La Bruyere
#4. When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it we rob ourselves.
Jean De La Bruyere
#5. A man can deceive a woman by his sham attachment to her provided he does not have a real attachment elsewhere.
Jean De La Bruyere
#6. To how many girls has a great beauty been of no other use but to make them expect a large fortune!
Jean De La Bruyere
#7. The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Jean De La Bruyere
#9. A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
Jean De La Bruyere
#10. 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 Bruyere
#11. A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.
Jean De La Bruyere
#13. There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.
Jean De La Bruyere
#14. 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 Bruyere
#16. Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Jean De La Bruyere
#17. We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
Jean De La Bruyere
#19. When life is unhappy it is hard to endure, when it is happy it is terrible to think of it ending. Both amount to the same thing in the end.
Jean De La Bruyere
#20. The very essence of politeness is to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.
Jean De La Bruyere
#22. A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.
Jean De La Bruyere
#23. No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.
Jean De La Bruyere
#24. Let us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature.
Jean De La Bruyere
#25. Children have neither past nor future;
they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.
Jean De La Bruyere
#26. It is in vain to ridicule a rich fool, for the laughers will be on his side.
Jean De La Bruyere
#27. Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.
Jean De La Bruyere
#28. We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.
Jean De La Bruyere
#29. All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#30. The flatterer does not think highly enough of himself or of others.
Jean De La Bruyere
#31. When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly manner.
Jean De La Bruyere
#33. Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.
Jean De La Bruyere
#34. The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.
Jean De La Bruyere
#35. 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 Bruyere
#36. A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account.
Jean De La Bruyere
#38. 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 Bruyere
#40. There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.
Jean De La Bruyere
#41. Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.
Jean De La Bruyere
#43. It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
Jean De La Bruyere
#44. The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images; we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately.
Jean De La Bruyere
#45. It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#46. There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.
Jean De La Bruyere
#47. The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.
Jean De La Bruyere
#48. If it is true that one is poor on account of all the things one wants, the ambitious and the avaricious languish in extreme poverty.
Jean De La Bruyere
#49. 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 Bruyere
#50. A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetratable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heartm speaks and acts against his feelings.
Jean De La Bruyere
#51. A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.
Jean De La Bruyere
#52. A man of moderate Understanding, thinks he writes divinely: A man of good Understanding, thinks he writes reasonably.
Jean De La Bruyere
#54. Men are the cause of women not loving one another.
[Fr., Les hommes sont la cause que les femmes ne s'aiment point.]
Jean De La Bruyere
#55. The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.
Jean De La Bruyere
#56. There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#58. A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
Jean De La Bruyere
#59. Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
Jean De La Bruyere
#60. Genius and great abilities are often wanting; sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done; others for what they would have done.
Jean De La Bruyere
#61. The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.
Jean De La Bruyere
#62. When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.
Jean De La Bruyere
#63. One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.
Jean De La Bruyere
#64. A man's worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.
Jean De La Bruyere
#66. There are but two ways of rising in the world: either by one's own industry or profiting by the foolishness of others.
[Fr., Il n'y a au monde que deux manieres de s'elever, ou par sa propre industrie, ou par l'imbecilite des autres.]
Jean De La Bruyere
#68. It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of praise; we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.
Jean De La Bruyere
#69. Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.
Jean De La Bruyere
#70. 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 Bruyere
#71. Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#72. Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.
Jean De La Bruyere
#73. To be among people one loves, that's sufficient; to dream, to speak to them, to be silent among them, to think of indifferent things; but among them, everything is equal.
Jean De La Bruyere
#74. A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
Jean De La Bruyere
#76. It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#78. 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 Bruyere
#79. The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.
Jean De La Bruyere
#80. When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death.
Jean De La Bruyere
#81. If you wish to be held in esteem, you must ssociate only with those who estimable.
Jean De La Bruyere
#82. 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 Bruyere
#83. In art them is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste.
Jean De La Bruyere
#84. You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?
Jean De La Bruyere
#86. Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.
Jean De La Bruyere
#87. It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.
Jean De La Bruyere
#88. You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.
Jean De La Bruyere
#90. 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 Bruyere
#91. Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.
Jean De La Bruyere
#93. An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.
Jean De La Bruyere
#95. 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 Bruyere
#96. A look of intelligence is what regularity of features is to women: it is a styule of beauty to which the most vain may aspire.
Jean De La Bruyere
#97. Among some people arrogance supplies the place of grandeur, inhumanity of decision, and roguery of intelligence.
Jean De La Bruyere
#98. A man must be completely wanting in intelligence if he does not show it when actuated by love, malice, or necessity.
Jean De La Bruyere
#99. It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
Jean De La Bruyere
#100. Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.
Jean De La Bruyere
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