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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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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
Cities
Wanton
Greatest
Pursuits
Pleasure
Suppress
Money
Mirth
Would
Stillness
Love
Idle
Curiosity
Iniquitous
Pursuit
Exorbitant

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We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice
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The court is like a palace built of marble I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polished people. [Fr., La cour est comme un edifice bati de marbre je veux dire qu'elle est composee d'hommes fort durs mais fort polis.]
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The State not seldom tolerates a comparatively great evil to keep out millions of lesser ills and inconveniences which otherwise would be inevitable and without remedy.
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We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time.
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Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.
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There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.
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When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
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A man may have intelligence enough to excel in a particular thing and lecture on it, and yet not have sense enough to know he ought to be silent on some other subject of which he has but a slight knowledge if such an illustrious man ventures beyond the bounds of his capacity, he loses his way and talks like a fool.
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A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.
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A man without characteristics is a most insipid character.
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All the worth of some people lies in their name upon a closer inspection it dwindles to nothing, but from a distance it deceives us.
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A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
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Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
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People reveal their character even in the simplest things they do. Fools do not enter a room, nor leave it, nor sit down, nor rise, nor are they silent, nor do they stand up, like people of sense and understanding.
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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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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.
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The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains.
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It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.
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A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd.
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