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
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Simplicity
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
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Friends, Forgiveness, Feelings, Friendship
I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I began to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely too eclipse that of others.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Obedience, Merit
A person’s worth in this world is estimated according to the value they put on themselves.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Self Respect, Self-Esteem
A vain man finds his account in speaking good or evil of himself.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Vanity
They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Living, Life
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Opera
With virtue, capacity, and good conduct, one still can be insupportable. The manners, which are neglected as small things, are often those which decide men for or against you. A slight attention to them would have prevented their ill judgments.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Manners
Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wealth, Riches
Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wealth
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
We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much; a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows, but which all the world does not practise.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Speech
We hope to grow old, yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Old Age
Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Time, Time Management
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: Ancestry, Character
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.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Power
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Humor
Women are ever in extremes; they are either better or worse than men.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Woman
The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Giving, Charity
Supposing men were to live forever in this world, I cannot see how it is possible for them to do more toward their establishment here than they do now.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: World
A bachelor’s life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Men
The passion of hatred is so durable and so inveterate, that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is a wish for reconciliation.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Hatred, Hate
Liberality consists rather in giving seasonably than much.
—Jean de La Bruyere
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
The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Rest, People, Best
The court is like a palace built of marble—made up of very hard, and very polished materials.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Law
There are peculiar ways in men, which discover what they are, through the most subtle feints and closest disguise. A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Manners
Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Praise
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in 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.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Cunning, Judgment
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