Quotes from la bruyere jean de vi

It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues.

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.

All confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.

Love begins with love ; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.

Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.

To express truth is to write naturally, forcibly, and delicately.

Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.

The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.

To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.

We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.

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.

Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.

What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

We confide our secret to a friend, but in love it escapes us.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be preparing reasons for their children for being consoled at their deaths.

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.

There are but two ways of rising in the world, either by your own industry or by the folly of others.