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It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.

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
Madness
Enemy
Hate
Think
Thinking
Appeased
Indolence
Revenge

More quotes by Jean de la Bruyere

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Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.
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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.
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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.
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Children have neither past nor future and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present. [Fr., Les enfants n'ont ni passe ni avenir et, ce qui ne nous arrive guere, ils jouissent du present.]
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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.
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The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
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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.
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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.
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The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.
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The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls. [Fr., Apres l'esprit de discernement, ce qu'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles.]
Jean de la Bruyere
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He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well she should select only one of those qualities.
Jean de la Bruyere
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One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is the father.
Jean de la Bruyere
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Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere
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One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
Jean de la Bruyere
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It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.
Jean de la Bruyere
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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.
Jean de la Bruyere