Quote

The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.

Jean de la Bruyere

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ideas
Morals
Nothing
Finest
Manners
Ablest
Moral
Glean
Times
Moderns
Left
Ancients
Away
Swept
Beautiful
Amongst

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

Image
It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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
Image
The finest pleasure is kindness to others.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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
Image
I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues this is the root of all impertinence.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men compensation is just, and proceeds from God.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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
Image
Children have neither past nor future and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present. [Fr., Les enfants n'ont ni passe ni avenir et, ce qui ne nous arrive guere, ils jouissent du present.]
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
Jean de la Bruyere