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Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!

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
Littles
Imperfectly
Little
Excesses
Believe
Chaste
Make
Excess
Men
God
Sake
Practice
Religion

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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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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.]
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Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding.
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Widows, like ripe fruit, drop easily from their perch.
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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.
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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.]
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We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.
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Courtly manners are contagious they are caught at Versailles.
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Most men spend the first half of their lives making the second half miserable.
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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.
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Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.
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If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.
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Among some people arrogance supplies the place of grandeur, inhumanity of decision, and roguery of intelligence.
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A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
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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.
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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.
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If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man.
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We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.
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A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
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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.
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