Jean De La Bruyere

When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.

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

We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.

A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

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.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

Most men spend the best part of their lives making the remaining part wretched.

Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.

The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.

The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.

A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.

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.

He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.

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