Jean De La Bruyere

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.

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

How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!

There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.

Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.

Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.

A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.

No road is to long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.

Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

Let us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature.

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

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

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.

When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.

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.

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

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

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.