Jean de La Bruyère - Les Caracteres (1688)

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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 Bruyère
Menippus is a bird decked in various feathers which are not his. He neither says nor feels anything, but repeats the feelings and sayings of others; it is so natural for him to make use of other people's minds that he is the first deceived by it, and often believes he speaks his own mind or expresses his own thoughts when he is but the echo of some man he just parted with.

Jean de La Bruyère
There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called "work."

Jean de La Bruyère
Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.

Jean de La Bruyère
We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.

Jean de La Bruyère
One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

Jean de La Bruyère
Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men.

Jean de La Bruyère
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

Jean de La Bruyère
Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.

Jean de La Bruyère
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.

Jean de La Bruyère
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.

Jean de La Bruyère
A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

Jean de La Bruyère
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Jean de La Bruyère
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
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds.

Jean de La Bruyère