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Loneliness
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All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Love
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We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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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.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Marriage
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Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Mediocrity
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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!
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Men
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A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Opera
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The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Patience
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There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Politics
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Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Power
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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.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Praise
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A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Present, the
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Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- which seldom happens to us.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Reading
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When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Simplicity
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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.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Solitude
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This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Storytelling
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One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Style
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Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Wealth
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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.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Wish, Wishes, Wishing
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A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Books by and about Jean De La Bruyere