Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.

No road is to long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it

Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.

A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.

Courtly manners are contagious; they are caught at Versailles.

We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.

Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.

A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.

There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.

Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.

Incivility is not a Vice of the Soul, but the effect of several Vices; of Vanity, Ignorance of Duty, Laziness, Stupidity, Distraction, Contempt of others, and Jealousy.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.

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.

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!

If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is the father.

There are only 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.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others.

The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls. [Fr., Apres l'esprit de discernement, ce qu'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles.]

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

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.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and willfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.

We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

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.

A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.

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

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.

A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.

A fool is one whom simpletons believe to be a man on merit. [Fr., Un fat celui que les sots croient un homme de merite.]

Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.

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.

A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas.

If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man.

A man of moderate Understanding, thinks he writes divinely: A man of good Understanding, thinks he writes reasonably.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.

The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone. [Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]

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.

The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.

Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.

The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love.

Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.

Sudden love is latest cured.