Jean de La Bruyère Quotes

Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.

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.

La gloria o el mérito de ciertos hombres consiste en escribir bien; el de otros consiste en no escribir.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.

To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.

Il faut chercher seulement à penser et à parler juste, sans vouloir amener les autres à notre goût et à nos sentiments ; c'est une trop grande entreprise

That we seldom repent of talking too little and very often of talking too much is a … maxim that everybody knows and nobody practices

No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which docs not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.

Une froideur ou une incivilité qui vient de ceux qui sont au-dessus de nous nous les fait haïr, mais un salut ou un sourire nous les réconcilie.

[Il ne manque cependant à l'oisiveté du sage qu'un meilleur nom, et que méditer, parler, lire, et être tranquille s'appelât travailler.]

There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work”.

The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one’s own wit and intelligence, than in the power to draw forth the resources of others; he who leaves you after a long conversation, pleased with himself and the part he has taken in the discourse, will be your warmest admirer. Men do not care to admire you, they wish you to be pleased with them; they do not seek for instruction or even amusement from your discourse, but they do wish you to be made acquainted with their talents and powers of conversation; and the true man of genius will delicately make all who come in contact with him feel the exquisite satisfaction of knowing that they have appeared to advantage.

A fool is an automaton, a machine with springs which turn him about always in one manner, and preserve his equilibrium. He is ever the same, and never changes. If you have seen him once you have seen him at every moment and period of his life. He is at best but as the lowing ox or the whistling blackbird. He is fixed and obstinate, I may say, by nature. What appears least in him is his soul; that has neither activity nor energy; it reposes.

A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value they put on themselves.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.