Quotes from Jean de la Bruyere

The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.

Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.

Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.

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.

As a man falls out of favour and his wealth declines, we discover for the first time the ridiculous aspects of his character, which were always there but which wealth and favour had concealed.

What is certain in death is somewhat softened by what is uncertain; it is an indefiniteness in the time, which holds a certain relation to the infinite, and what is called eternity.

The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.

When life is unhappy it is hard to endure, when it is happy it is terrible to think of it ending. Both amount to the same thing in the end.

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

Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.

Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.

For a long time visits among lovers and professions of love are kept up through habit, after their behavior has plainly proved that love no longer exists.

A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.

Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.

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.

We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time.

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

Sudden love is latest cured.

The most amiable people are those who least wound the self-love of others.

We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love.

A lovely countenance is the fairest of all sights, and the sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of her whom we love.