Jean de la Bruyere
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.Collection: Husband
For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the humblest of husbands can bear; she should mercifully choose between the two.Collection: Husband
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.Collection: Book
I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.Collection: Men
The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.Collection: Pleasure
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.Collection: Greatness
If a secret is revealed, the person who has confided it to another is to be blamed.Collection: Secret
A man's worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.Collection: Men
Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.Collection: Pain
Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.Collection: Fall
It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.Collection: Men
Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!Collection: God
A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.Collection: Lying
The duty of a judge is to administer justice, but his practice is to delay itCollection: Practice
As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.Collection: Men
The same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.Collection: Reading
Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.Collection: Men
Foolish jokers are thick on the ground, and it rains insects of that sort everywhere. A good joker is a rarity; even a man who is such by nature finds it hard to sustain the part for long; it seldom happens that the man who makes us laugh wins our esteem.Collection: Country
To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!Collection: Men
A man may have intelligence enough to excel in a particular thing and lecture on it, and yet not have sense enough to know he ought to be silent on some other subject of which he has but a slight knowledge; if such an illustrious man ventures beyond the bounds of his capacity, he loses his way and talks like a fool.Collection: Men
The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.Collection: Desire
There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.Collection: Stupid
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.Collection: Love
It takes talent to please the people in a sermon by a flowery style, a cheerful ethic, brilliant sallies and lively descriptions; but such a talent is inadequate. A better sort of talent neglects these extraneous ornaments, unworthy to be used in the service of the Gospel: such a preacher's sermon will be simple, strong and Christian.Collection: Christian
A dogmatic tone is generally inspired by abysmal ignorance. The man who knows nothing thinks he is informing others of something which he has that moment learnt; the man who knows a great deal can scarcely believe that people are ignorant of what he is telling them, and speaks more diffidently.Collection: Ignorance
A lofty birth or a large fortune portend merit, and cause it to be the sooner noticed.Collection: Causes
When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly manner.Collection: Reading
During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue's sake.Collection: Wish
The greatest part of mankind employ their first years to make their last miserable.Collection: Years
A modest man never talks of himself.Collection: Men
I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.Collection: Mediocrity
Some men promise to keep your secret and yet reveal it without knowing they are doing so; they do not wag their lips, and yet they are understood; it is read on their brow and in their eyes; it is seen through their breast; they are transparent.Collection: Eye
Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.Collection: Duty
Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.Collection: Jest
Incivility is not a Vice of the Soul, but the effect of several Vices; of Vanity, Ignorance of Duty, Laziness, Stupidity, Distraction, Contempt of others, and Jealousy.Collection: Ignorance
We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.Collection: Power
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.Collection: Hard Work
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.Collection: Men
The finest pleasure is kindness to others.Collection: Kindness
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.Collection: Lying
Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.Collection: Teaching
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.Collection: Character
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.Collection: Strong
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.Collection: Children