Jean de La Bruyère - Les Caracteres (1688)

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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
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

Jean de La Bruyère
The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes.

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
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
Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.

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
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
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
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
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
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
The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?

Jean de La Bruyère
There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others.

Jean de La Bruyère
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
We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

Jean de La Bruyère
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
False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

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

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
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 are but three events in a man's life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

Jean de La Bruyère
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

Jean de La Bruyère
Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind ;
Therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced ; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of free-thinkers.

Jean de La Bruyère
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

Jean de La Bruyère
If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same circumstances as those unfortunate people for whom we feel, why are the latter so sparingly relieved by us of their condition?

Jean de La Bruyère
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

Jean de La Bruyère
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.

Jean de La Bruyère
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.

Jean de La Bruyère
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