Jean de la Bruyere
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.Collection: Alone
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.Collection: Sad
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Work
There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.Collection: Patience
Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.Collection: Legal
It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?Collection: Smile
Out of difficulties grow miracles.Collection: Inspirational
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.Collection: Alone
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.Collection: Marriage
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Death
The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.Collection: Funny
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.Collection: Friendship
The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.Collection: Society
Love and friendship exclude each other.Collection: Friendship
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.Collection: Poetry
Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.Collection: Friendship
All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.Collection: Alone
A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does.Collection: Character
What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?Collection: Spiritual
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 itCollection: Inspirational
There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.Collection: Gratitude
Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.Collection: Inspirational
Most men spend the best part of their lives making the remaining part wretched.Collection: Life
We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.Collection: Love Life
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.Collection: Love Always
If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is the father.Collection: Mother
A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.Collection: Inspirational
The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.Collection: Inspirational
Most men spend the first half of their lives making the second half miserable.Collection: Sadness
Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Life
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.Collection: Second Chance
They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Women
To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author.Collection: Book
An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation.Collection: Men
Favor exalts a man above his equals, but his dismissal from that favor places him below them.Collection: Men
There exist some evils so terrible and some misfortunes so horrible that we dare not think of them, whilst their very aspect makes us shudder; but if they happen to fall on us, we find ourselves stronger than we imagined, we grapple with our ill luck, and behave better than we expected we should.Collection: Fear
The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.Collection: Criticism
Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice; there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.Collection: Quality
All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.Collection: Knowing
It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing; if it is not covered with flowers, with fruit trees and grains, it produces briers and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.Collection: Flower
A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women, forgetting that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young now only makes her look older.Collection: Passion
It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.Collection: Revenge
Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.Collection: Life
We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.Collection: People
If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.Collection: Cities