Quotes from Jean de la Bruyere

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

There are only three events in a man's life birth, life, and death he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

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.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.

We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and willfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.

We should keep silent about those in power to speak well of them almost implies flattery to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

Man has but three events in his life: to be born, to live, and to die. He is not conscious of his birth, he suffers at his death and he forgets to live.

It is because of men that women dislike one another.

It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part what does it cost to add a smile?

The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.