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

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.
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Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.
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When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.
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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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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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It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
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The nearer we come to great men the more clearly we see that they are only men. They rarely seem great to their valets.
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Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
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Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
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The art of conversation consists far less in displaying much wit oneself than in helping others to be witty: the man who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own wit is very well pleased with you.
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A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.
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We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.
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A man without characteristics is a most insipid character.
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Tyranny has no need of arts or sciences, for its policy, which is very shallow and without any refinement, only consists in shedding blood.
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Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.
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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 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.
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Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.
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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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An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation.
Jean de la Bruyere