Quote

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

Jean de la Bruyere

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Jean de la Bruyere
Age: 50 †
Born: 1645
Born: August 16
Died: 1696
Died: May 10
Aphorist
Essayist
French Moralist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Jean de La Bruyere
Book
Craft
Needs
Wit
Like
Crafts
Author
Native
Clock
Making

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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Rarely do they appear great before their valets. [Fr., Rarement ils sont grands vis-a-vis de leur valets-de-chambre.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part what does it cost to add a smile?
Jean de la Bruyere
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The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls. [Fr., Apres l'esprit de discernement, ce qu'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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Foolish jokers are thick on the ground, and it rains insects of that sort everywhere. A good joker is a rarity even a man who is such by nature finds it hard to sustain the part for long it seldom happens that the man who makes us laugh wins our esteem.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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 Bruyere
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It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost?
Jean de la Bruyere
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Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.
Jean de la Bruyere
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An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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 Bruyere
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The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others already they are men.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A man without characteristics is a most insipid character.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Let us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature.
Jean de la Bruyere
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He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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 Bruyere