French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexion, and their faces to become as fiery and as leaden as they make them with the red and the paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the most wretched creatures on earth.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
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
"Of Freethinkers", Les Caractères
He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", 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
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Court", Les Caractères
Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", 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
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
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
There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be preparing reasons for their children for being consoled at their deaths.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
There are but two ways of rising in the world, either by your own industry or by the folly of others.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others; already they are men.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
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
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères