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A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.

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
Men
Coxcomb
Simpletons
Merit
Ignorance
Believe

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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Genius and great abilities are often wanting sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done others for what they would have done.
Jean de la Bruyere
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There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.
Jean de la Bruyere
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We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time.
Jean de la Bruyere
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To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock something more than intelligence is required to become an author.
Jean de la Bruyere
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If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.
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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A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves.
Jean de la Bruyere
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I call worldly or earthly those whose minds and hearts are fixed on a tiny portion of this world they live in, which is our earth who respect and love nothing beyond it: people as limited as what they call their property or their estate, which can be measured, whose acres can be counted, whose boundaries can be shown.
Jean de la Bruyere
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We all covet wealth, but not its perils.
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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Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A woman with eyes only for one person, or with eyes always averted from him, creates exactly the same impression.
Jean de la Bruyere