Jean de La Bruyère

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Jean de La Bruyere

Jean de La Bruyère ( in French) (August 16 1645 – May 10, 1696), was a French essayist and moralist. He was born in Paris, not, as was once thought, at Dourdan (in today's Essonne département) in 1645. His family was middle class, and his reference to a certain Geoffroy de La Bruyère, a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self-ennoblement common in France as in some other countries. Indeed he himself always signed the name Delabruyère in one word, as evidence of this. He... full article at wikipedia

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Aug 16, 1645

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Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

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.

The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

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.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

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May 10, 1696

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Created by Metaweb Oct 22, 2006

Last edited by mw_prop_bot Aug 20, 2008

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