Quote

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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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
Take
Vice
Like
Pretend
Vices
Exists
Advantage
Virtue
Less
Resemblance
Doe
Assumed

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The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth. [Fr., Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires ou des personnes est souvent la verite.]
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Sudden love is latest cured.
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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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A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.
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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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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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Physiognomy is not a guide that has been given us by which to judge of the character of men: it may only serve us for conjecture. [Fr., La physionomie n'est pas une regle qui nous soit donnee pour juger des hommes elle nous peut servir de conjecture.]
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A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.
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Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.
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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.
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Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men compensation is just, and proceeds from God.
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When we have run through all forms of government, without partiality to that we were born under, we are at a loss with which to side they are all a compound of good and evil. It is therefore most reasonable and safe to value that of our own country above all others, and to submit to it.
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When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a VIzor and a Face.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains.
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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How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed, nor attempts to govern others.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Intelligence is to genius as the whole is in proportion to its part. [Fr., Entre esprit et talent il y a la proportion du tout a sa partie.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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A dogmatic tone is generally inspired by abysmal ignorance. The man who knows nothing thinks he is informing others of something which he has that moment learnt the man who knows a great deal can scarcely believe that people are ignorant of what he is telling them, and speaks more diffidently.
Jean de la Bruyere