Jean de la Bruyère (French: [ʒɑ̃ də la bʁyjɛʁ]; 16 August 1645 – 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist, who was noted for his satire.
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.
They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination.
Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.
The nearer we approach great men, the clearer we see that they are men.
A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others.
Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.
Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.
A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.
Impertinent wits are a kind of insect which are in everybody's way and plentiful in all countries.
Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.
Intelligence is to genius as the whole is in proportion to its part. [Fr. , Entre esprit et talent il y a la proportion du tout a sa partie. ]
It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence. [Fr. , L'impossibilite ou je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas, me decouvre son existence. ]
A man must be very inert to have no character at all.
Whatever is certain in death is slightly alleviated by what is not so infallible; the time when it shall happen is undefined, but it is more or less connected with the infinite, and what we call eternity.
There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.
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!
A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich.