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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

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

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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The finest pleasure is kindness to others.
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A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
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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.
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For some people, speaking and giving offence are one and the same thing. They are spiteful and bitter their style is infused with gall and wormwood mockery, abuse and insults flow from their lips like spittle.
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How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!
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A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does.
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Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
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A man unattached and without wife, if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest this is less easy for him who is engaged it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank.
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It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of praise we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.
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Courtly manners are contagious they are caught at Versailles.
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A faithless woman, if known to be such by the person concerned, is but faithless if she is believed faithful, she is treacherous.
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The best way to get on in the world is to make people believe it's to their advantage to help you.
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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.
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We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men compensation is just, and proceeds from God.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
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We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.
Jean de la Bruyere