Quote

It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost?

Jean de la Bruyere

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Grace
Doe
Confer
Littles
Favor
Little
Favors
Hard
Proof
Giving
Painful
Smile
Cost

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

Image
Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness buries it.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the humblest of husbands can bear she should mercifully choose between the two.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less or if you must talk, say little.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and willfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Foolish jokers are thick on the ground, and it rains insects of that sort everywhere. A good joker is a rarity even a man who is such by nature finds it hard to sustain the part for long it seldom happens that the man who makes us laugh wins our esteem.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
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
Image
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.
Jean de la Bruyere
Image
Wit is the god of moments, but Genius is the god of ages.
Jean de la Bruyere