Jean de La Bruyère Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.

Jean de La Bruyère
What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made ; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal?

Jean de La Bruyère
The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food - they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.

Jean de La Bruyère
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
There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something.

Jean de La Bruyère
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 Bruyère
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well timed.

Jean de La Bruyère
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

Jean de La Bruyère
Women are extremists: they are either better or worse than men.

Jean de La Bruyère
A man who lives in indifference is one who has never seen the woman he could love.

Jean de La Bruyère
The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you. Most men would rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded.

Jean de La Bruyère
Man has but three events in his life: to be born, to live, and to die. He is not conscious of his birth, he suffers at his death and he forgets to live.

Jean de La Bruyère
Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honor, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.

Jean de La Bruyère
All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard in the sanctuary ; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His mysteries.

Jean de La Bruyère
There are some places that we admire; others that attract us, and where we would like to dwell.

Jean de La Bruyère
Some women have in the course of their lives a double engagement to sustain, equally difficult to break or to dissimulate: in one case the contract is wanting, in the other the heart.

Jean de La Bruyère
It is to teach us early in life how to think, and to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent Nature has given to women so much chit-chat.

Jean de La Bruyère
The beginning and the decline of love manifest themselves in the embarrassment that one feels in the tete-a-tete.

Jean de La Bruyère
There is pleasure in meeting the eyes of those to whom we have done good.

Jean de La Bruyère
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

Jean de La Bruyère
To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?

Jean de La Bruyère
There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.

Jean de La Bruyère
Men would not live long in society if they were not the dupes of each other.

Jean de La Bruyère
Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.

Jean de La Bruyère
Marriage was instituted as a penance for the sins of celibacy.

Jean de La Bruyère
A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

Jean de La Bruyère
Beauty without modesty is like a flower broken from its stem.

Jean de La Bruyère
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.

Jean de La Bruyère
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Jean de La Bruyère
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