Jean de La Bruyère Quotes
Most popular Jean de La Bruyère Quotes
Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic.
We all covet wealth, but not its perils.
Time, which strengthens friendship weakens love.
False modesty is the refinement of vanity. It is a lie.
It is motive alone that gives character to actions of men.
If Poverty is the Mother of Crimes, want of Sense is the Father.
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the one we love.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
The most amiable men are those who least wound the self-love of others.
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well timed.
We are more sociable, and get on better with men, by the heart than the intellect.
Two men cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.
Let us not envy some men's accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us.
To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?
The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself.
Children have neither past nor future; and what scarcely ever happens to us, they enjoy the present.
The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.
A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession of business the surest way of growing rich.
Modesty is to merit what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
There are only two ways of getting on in the world - by one's own industry or by the weakness of others.
There are only two ways of getting on in this world: by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others!
If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
There is no business in this world so troublesome as the pursuit of fame: life is over before you have hardly begun your work.
A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.
A long illness seems to be placed between life and death, in order to make death a comfort both to those who die and to those who remain.
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.
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.
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!
