Quote

We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice

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
Speech
Practice
Trite
Often
Maxim
Doe
Maxims
Littles
Repent
Little
Vulgar
Much
Seldom
World
Speaking

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A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
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Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.
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The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.
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It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
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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.
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Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.
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We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions.
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Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
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There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.
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The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.
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Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.
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There are only three events in a man's life birth, life, and death he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.
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The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.
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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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If men wish to be held in esteem, they must associate with those only who are estimable.
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?
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities it floats between virtue and vice there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.
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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!
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Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.
Jean de la Bruyere