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.
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.
There are only 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.
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.
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
The favor of princes does not preclude the existence of merit, and yet does not prove that it exists. [Fr. , La faveur des princes n'exclut pas le merite, et ne le suppose pas aussi. ]
Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.
It is because of men that women dislike one another.
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.
There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name; life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work.
It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
To delay is injustice.
Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.
Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.
We dread old age, which are not sure of being able to attain. [Fr. , L'on craint la vieillesse, que l'on n'est pas sur de pouvoir atteindre. ]
Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success; successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.
A modest man never talks of himself.
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
The fear of old age disturbs us, yet we are not certain of becoming old.
Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.
A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.