Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)

Jean de La Bruyère (1645–96) was a French writer and one of the great moralists of French classicism. His only work, Les Caractères (1688,) encapsulates the psychological, social, and moral character of the French society of his time.

Not much is known about La Bruyère’s life. Born in Paris, he studied law at Orléans. He became one of the tutors to the Duke de Bourbon, grandson of the Prince de Condé, and remained in the Condé household as a librarian at Chantilly. He never married and died poor.

Les Caractères, fully Les Caractères de Théophraste, traduits du grec, avec les caractères ou les moeurs de ce siècle, (1688; The Characters of Theophrastus, Translated from the Greek, with the Characters or Manners of This Century, 1699,) comprises a treatise on the natural philosopher Theophrastus and La Bruyère’s translation of Theophrastus. It is then followed by 420 of La Bruyère’s reflections on the manners of his time.

Les Caractères portrays contemporary French dignitaries with masked names and unmasks the vanity and corruption of human behavior by satirizing Parisian society. Les Caractères was a particular favorite of David Hume and was widely admired by such writers as Gustave Flaubert, André Gide, and Marcel Proust.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Jean de La Bruyere

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Acting As If, Laughter, Happiness

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present—which seldom happens to us.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Present, Live-now, Inner-child, The Present, Children

It is hard for a haughty man ever to forgive one that has caught him in a fault, and whom he knows has reason to complain of him: his resentment never subsides till he has regained the advantage he has lost, and found means to make the other do him equal wrong.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Forgiveness

As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wealth, Prosperity, Riches

It is because of men that women dislike one another.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Women

It’s motive alone that gives character to the actions of men.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Character, Action

Out of difficulties grow miracles.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Difficulty, Miracles

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

There are only two ways of getting on in the world; by one’s own industry, or by the stupidity of others.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Ambition, Work, Getting Ahead

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who has entrusted it.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Secrecy, Proverbs, Secrets

We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Self-Esteem, Self Respect

Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Past and Present

A man is more faithful to the secret of another man than to his own; a woman, on the contrary, preserves her own secret better than that of another.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Secrecy

The pleasure of criticism takes from us that of being deeply moved by very beautiful things.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Criticism, Critics

It would be a kind of ferocity to reject indifferently all sorts of praise. One should be glad to have that which comes from good men who praise in sincerity things that are really praiseworthy.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Praise

We never deceive for a good purpose; knavery adds malice to falsehood.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Deceit

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.
Jean de La Bruyere

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Crime

After a spirit of discernment, the next rarest things in the world are diamonds and pearls.
Jean de La Bruyere

It is quite as much of a trade to make a book, as to make a clock.—It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing

Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Marriage

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.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Future, The Future, Goodness

It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace.—How little does a smile cost!
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Gifts

It is fortunate to come of distinguished ancestry.—It is not less so to be such that people do not care to inquire whether you are of high descent or not.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Character, Ancestry

The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose even their money in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making an amazing noise about it.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Manners

Love and friendship exclude each other.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Love

A lovely countenance is the fairest of all sights, and the sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of her whom we love.
Jean de La Bruyere

The very impossibility which I find to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Existence, God

He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Riches, Poverty

There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads on the heels of great and unexpected riches.
Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Fortune, Poverty, Living, Courage

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