French philosopher and moralist (1645-1696)
It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Love begins with love ; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately ; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Court", Les Caractères
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.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
The same common-sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
A long disease seems to be a halting place between life and death, that death itself may be a comfort to those who die and to those who are left behind.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse ; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Freethinkers", Les Caractères
He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexion, and their faces to become as fiery and as leaden as they make them with the red and the paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the most wretched creatures on earth.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age
No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
To express truth is to write naturally, forcibly, and delicately.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères