The very impossibility which I find to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Existence, God
If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous purpose, and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Cities
Love and friendship exclude each other.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Love
He who has lived a day has lived an age.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Time Management, Value of a Day
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Time, Value of Time, Brevity, Time Management, Carpe-diem
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Logic
He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he on the contrary who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Desire
A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Modesty, Humility
All confidence is dangerous, if it is not entire; we ought on most occasions to speak all, or conceal all. We have already too much disclosed our secrets to a man, from whom we think any one single circumstance is to be concealed.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Confidence
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wishes
Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.
—Jean de La Bruyere
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.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
Dissimulation is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not, artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful. The best and safest policy is never to have recourse to deception, to avail yourself of quirks, or to practice low cunning, but to prove yourself in every circumstance of life upright and sincere. This system is that which noble minds will adopt, and the dictates of an enlightened and superior understanding would be sufficient to insure its adoption.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Intelligence, Taste, Style
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty
It’s motive alone that gives character to the actions of men.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Action, Character
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Storytelling
The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Boredom
A bachelor’s life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Men
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Opera
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
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.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Cunning
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Love
It is because of men that women dislike one another.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Women
There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.
—Jean de La Bruyere
The great slight the men of wit who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the great who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit, they have not virtue.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Virtue
That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Goodness
There are but 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.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Carpe-diem
Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Logic
The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Conversation
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Henri de Montherlant French Essayist, Novelist, Dramatist
- Guy Debord French Philosopher
- Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux French Literary Critic
- Antoine Arnauld French Theologian
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld French Writer
- Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand French Writer, Statesman
- Claude Levi-Strauss French Anthropologist
- Henri Poincare French Mathematician
- Jean Guitton French Catholic Philosopher
- Jean le Rond d’Alembert French Mathematician
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