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Quotes from Les Caractères — Jean de La Bruyère

1645–1696 France

← All quotes by Jean de La Bruyère

58 quotes

Wise men sometimes avoid the world, that they may not be surfeited with it.

Les Caractères (1688)

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.

Les Caractères (1688)

An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts to control others; he wishes reason alone to rule, and that always.

Les Caractères (1688)

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

Les Caractères (1688)

There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work.”

Les Caractères (1688)

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.

Les Caractères (1688)

Women, ever in extremes, are always either better or worse than men.

Les Caractères (1688)

Men are the reason why women do not love each other.

Les Caractères (1688)

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.

Les Caractères (1688)

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

Les Caractères (1688)

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

Les Caractères (1688)

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

Les Caractères (1688)

Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.

Les Caractères (1688)

There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.

Les Caractères (1688)

There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others.

Les Caractères (1688)

No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.

Les Caractères (1688)

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

Les Caractères (1688)

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

Les Caractères (1688)

Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men.

Les Caractères (1688)

You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.

Les Caractères (1688)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Jean de La Bruyère (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.