Quote

It takes talent to please the people in a sermon by a flowery style, a cheerful ethic, brilliant sallies and lively descriptions but such a talent is inadequate. A better sort of talent neglects these extraneous ornaments, unworthy to be used in the service of the Gospel: such a preacher's sermon will be simple, strong and Christian.

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
People
Takes
Brilliant
Repetition
Ornaments
Sort
Service
Cheerful
Exhilarating
Quality
Morality
Preacher
Ethic
Sallies
Simple
Figures
Description
Lively
Flowery
Christian
Speech
Possessed
Remarks
Neglects
Strong
Please
Neglect
Unworthy
Extraneous
Used
Talent
Charm
Inadequate
Descriptions
Better
Style
Gospel
Vivid
Sermon

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.
Jean de la Bruyere
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High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry two weaknesses which they dare not own -- one of the heart, the other of the mind.
Jean de la Bruyere
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The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.
Jean de la Bruyere
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A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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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Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.
Jean de la Bruyere
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I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.
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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The best way to get on in the world is to make people believe it's to their advantage to help you.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere