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.
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!
I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.
In Friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.
A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.
All confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.
False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.
Impertinent wits are a kind of insect which are in everybody's way and plentiful in all countries.
One faithful Friend is enough for a man's self, 'tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can't have too many for the sake of others.
It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent.
Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness buries it.
The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
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.
It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.
To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.
When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.
There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others.
It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.