French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter.php on line 35
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Les Caractères
The shortest and best way of making your fortune is to let people clearly see that it is their interest to promote yours.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
The critics, or those who, thinking themselves so, decide deliberately and decisively about all public representations, group and divide themselves into different parties, each of whom admires a certain poem or a certain music and damns all others, urged on by a wholly different motive than public interest or justice. The ardour with which they defend their prejudices damages the opposite party as well as their own set. These men discourage poets and musicians by a thousand contradictions, and delay the progress of arts and sciences, by depriving them of the advantages to be obtained by that emulation and freedom which many excellent masters, each in their own way and according to their own genius, might display in the execution of some very fine works.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
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 BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own -- one of the heart, the other of the mind.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Nothing makes us better understand what trifling things Providence thinks He bestows on men in granting them wealth, money, dignities, and other advantages, than the manner in which they are distributed and the kind of men who have the largest share.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the greatest triumph is to conquer a man's own interests.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself sufficiently rewarded.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
False modesty is the last refinement of vanity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
A great mind is above insults, injustice, grief, and raillery, and would be invulnerable were it not open to compassion.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Women become attached to men through the favours they grant them, but men are cured of their love through those same favours.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a Vizor and a Face.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age
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.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our perplexity when alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères