Quotes from Jean de la Bruyere

Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves.

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

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

To be among people one loves, that's sufficient; to dream, to speak to them, to be silent among them, to think of indifferent things; but among them, everything is equal.

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

In Friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.

Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.

We should like those whom we love to receive all their happiness, or, if this were impossible, all their unhappiness from our hands.

It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

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

The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth. [Fr., Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires ou des personnes est souvent la verite.]

Logic is the art of convincing us some truth.

We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.

A woman with eyes only for one person, or with eyes always averted from him, creates exactly the same impression.

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

Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.

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

Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness buries it.

A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.

Banter is often a proof of want of intelligence.

This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude.

Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do.