Jean de la Bruyere
A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit.Collection: Men
We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love.Collection: Secret
The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.Collection: Men
Women are extreme; they are better than men, or worse.Collection: Running
Banter is often a proof of want of intelligence.Collection: Want
Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.Collection: Science
We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions.Collection: Thinking
Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.Collection: Time
A man who is free and unmarried, if he has some intelligence, can rise above his fortune, mingle in society and meet the best people on an equal footing. This is harder for a married man: marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.Collection: Wedding
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.Collection: Death
A man of moderate Understanding, thinks he writes divinely: A man of good Understanding, thinks he writes reasonably.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Book
High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.Collection: Challenges
A man without characteristics is a most insipid character.Collection: Character
The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Perfect
All the worth of some people lies in their name; upon a closer inspection it dwindles to nothing, but from a distance it deceives us.Collection: Distance
Whatever is certain in death is slightly alleviated by what is not so infallible; the time when it shall happen is undefined, but it is more or less connected with the infinite, and what we call eternity.Collection: Infinite
A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.Collection: Men
I am not surprised that men who put their trust in an atom should fail in their slightest attempts to plumb truth, that with such limited vision they cannot see beyond the sky and the stars to God Himself; that since they cannot discern the superiority of what is spiritual or the dignity of man's soul, they are even more unaware how hard it is to satisfy, how the whole earth is unworthy of it, how urgently it needs a supremely perfect being, who is God, and how indispensable to it is a religion which will lead it towards God and provide a sure pledge of Him.Collection: Stars
Courtly manners are contagious; they are caught at Versailles.Collection: Versailles
Among some people arrogance supplies the place of grandeur, inhumanity of decision, and roguery of intelligence.Collection: People
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.Collection: Powerful
Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.Collection: Temptation
We confide our secret to a friend, but in love it escapes us.Collection: Secret
To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.Collection: Hate
Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.Collection: Conversation
When life is unhappy it is hard to endure, when it is happy it is terrible to think of it ending. Both amount to the same thing in the end.Collection: Thinking
There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.Collection: Birth Life And Death
The nearer we approach great men, the clearer we see that they are men.Collection: Men
Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.Collection: Evil
A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.Collection: Running
The best way to get on in the world is to make people believe it's to their advantage to help you.Collection: Work
It is a great misfortune not to possess sufficient wit to speak well, nor sufficient judgment to keep silent.Collection: Speech
False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.Collection: Real
As a man falls out of favour and his wealth declines, we discover for the first time the ridiculous aspects of his character, which were always there but which wealth and favour had concealed.Collection: Men
An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all.Collection: Women
A lovely countenance is the fairest of all sights, and the sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of her whom we love.Collection: Sight
Don't wait to be happy to laugh... You may die and never have laughed.Collection: Happiness
A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.Collection: Wise
You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.Collection: Dog
We need not envy certain people their great wealth; they acquired it at a heavy cost, which would not suit us; they staked their rest, their health, their honour and their conscience to acquire it, the price is too high, and there is nothing to be gained by such a bargain.Collection: Men
False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.Collection: Men
A faithless woman, if known to be such by the person concerned, is but faithless; if she is believed faithful, she is treacherous.Collection: Faithful
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.Collection: Fall
Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.Collection: Men