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We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better.

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
Ought
Enemy
Friends
Known
Become
Better
Might
Make
Enemies

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A man of variable mind is not one man, but several men in one he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now he is his own successor.
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There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.
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Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, and gratitude it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly, as he should be within.
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It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
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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.
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During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue's sake.
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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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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.
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Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!
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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.
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It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
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A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.
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Out of difficulties grow miracles.
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There are but three events which concern man: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live.
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When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.
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Most men spend the best part of their lives making the remaining part wretched.
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We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
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It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.
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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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It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
Jean de la Bruyere