French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
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
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", 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
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", 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
The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
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
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
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
Love begins with love ; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age
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
The fear of old age disturbs us, yet we are not certain of becoming old.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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 BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", 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
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
A man must be very inert to have no character at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", 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
Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", 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