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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.

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
Thinking
Seven
Late
Thousand
Living
Everything
Come
Years
Men
Originality

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone. [Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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One faithful Friend is enough for a man's self, 'tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can't have too many for the sake of others.
Jean de la Bruyere
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If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
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Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.
Jean de la Bruyere
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High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen.
Jean de la Bruyere
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He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.
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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Out of difficulties grow miracles.
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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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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A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.
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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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work.
Jean de la Bruyere
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If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The court is like a palace built of marble I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polished people. [Fr., La cour est comme un edifice bati de marbre je veux dire qu'elle est composee d'hommes fort durs mais fort polis.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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A man who is free and unmarried, if he has some intelligence, can rise above his fortune, mingle in society and meet the best people on an equal footing. This is harder for a married man: marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence. [Fr., L'impossibilite ou je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas, me decouvre son existence.]
Jean de la Bruyere