Words matter. These are the best Jean de la Bruyere Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.
Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.
This great misfortune – to be incapable of solitude.
The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.
Love and friendship exclude each other.
A man can keep another’s secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.
There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.
I would not like to see a person who is sober, moderate, chaste and just say that there is no God. They would speak disinterestedly at least, but such a person is not to be found.
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.
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.
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.
A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.
They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
The court is like a palace of marble; it’s composed of people very hard and very polished.
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.
A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds – habits and novelty.
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.
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.
He who tip-toes cannot stand; he who strides cannot walk.
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.
The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
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.
The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.
