Quotes from Jean de la Bruyere

Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.

It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?

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

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?

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.

Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

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

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.

There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others.

A long disease seems to be a halting place between life and death, that death itself may be a comfort to those who die and to those who are left behind.

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.

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

Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.