Jean de la Bruyere
We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.Collection: Self Love
Friendship * * * is a long time in forming, it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity.Collection: Friendship
To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?Collection: Generosity
Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.Collection: Friendship
The fears of old age disturb us, yet how few attain it?Collection: Age
It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.Collection: Writing
We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.Collection: Heart
The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.Collection: Mind
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.Collection: News
The State not seldom tolerates a comparatively great evil to keep out millions of lesser ills and inconveniences which otherwise would be inevitable and without remedy.Collection: Evil
The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.Collection: Funny
Profane eloquence is transfered from the bar, where Le Maitre, Pucelle, and Fourcroy formerly practised it, and where it has become obsolete, to the Pulpit, where it is out of place.Collection: Bars
A man must be completely wanting in intelligence if he does not show it when actuated by love, malice, or necessity.Collection: Men
To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.Collection: Thinking
He who has lived a day has lived an age.Collection: Age
We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practiceCollection: Practice
Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.Collection: Life
Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.Collection: Able
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.Collection: God
In art them is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste.Collection: Art
To delay is injustice.Collection: Procrastination
Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.Collection: Loyalty
A man unattached and without wife, if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; this is less easy for him who is engaged; it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank.Collection: Fashion
This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.Collection: Solitude
The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.Collection: Education
Tyranny has no need of arts or sciences, for its policy, which is very shallow and without any refinement, only consists in shedding blood.Collection: Art
Sudden love is latest cured.Collection: Love
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends as to give them no cause to miss him less.Collection: Friendship
The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple language; emphasis spoils them.Collection: Simple
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.Collection: Love
How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!Collection: Happiness
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.Collection: People
When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.Collection: Book
Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.Collection: Loss
The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.Collection: Long
Envy and hatred go together. Mutually strengthened by the fact pursue the same object.Collection: Envy
A man can deceive a woman by his sham attachment to her provided he does not have a real attachment elsewhere.Collection: Real
A long disease seems to be a halting place between life and death, that death itself may be a comfort to those who die and to those who are left behind.Collection: Long
Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis; but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.Collection: Expression
A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'Collection: Character
There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating.Collection: Speaking Well
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.Collection: Men
No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.Collection: Vices
You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?Collection: Thinking
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.Collection: Spring
The reason that women do not love one another is - men.Collection: Men
The doctors allow one to die, the charlatans kill.Collection: Doctors
A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account.Collection: Cutting