It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.


Jean De La Bruyere

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Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its ...
BARUCH (_BENEDICT DE) SPINOZA
Perhaps you are making a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost seems...
THOMAS HARDY
I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredn...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
I greatly enjoyed the Hawaiian Islands. They are a real little paradise in spite of the influx of Am...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The earth's crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are s...
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Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friends...
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I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is t...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Death is acceptable only if it represents the physically necessary passage toward a union, the condi...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to oth...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical concilia...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the e...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life - I don't mean the ironic and disillusioned smi...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinion...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The facts tell us that no religious Faith releases - or ever has released at any moment in History -...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The profoundly 'atomic' character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in rain...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Long before the awakening of thought on earth, manifestations of cosmic energy must have been produc...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
To say that Christ is the term and motive force of evolution, to say that he manifests himself as &#...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
We have but one permanent home: heaven - that's still the old truth that we always have to re-le...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that function...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other word...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experi...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Being happy is a matter of personal taste.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The Church is like a great tree whose roots must be energetically anchored in the earth while its le...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. Bu...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of th...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landown...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by per...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the obje...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of know...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geologic...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
At the heart of every being lies creation's dream of a principle that will one day give organic ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The number of known human fossils only increases slowly. But the manner of regarding and assessing t...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Truly, there is a Christian note which makes the whole World vibrate, like an immense gong, in the d...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possi...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Whether one welcomes or deplores it, nothing is more surely and exactly characteristic of modern tim...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to whi...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
When all is said and done, what constitutes the impregnable superiority of Christianity over all oth...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistan...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of th...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
In the divine milieu, all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The history of the kingdom of God is, directly, one of a reunion. The total divine milieu is formed ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace mar...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own s...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No othe...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual w...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-a...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it an...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that h...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
One mustn't close one's eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lo...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Los efectos de la conservación de la Tierra dependen de la conservación de las causas.
MARTíN BALAREZO GARCíA
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
BLAISE PASCAL
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
ALBERT CAMUS
We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
BLAISE PASCAL
Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood ...
ALBERT CAMUS
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
ALBERT CAMUS
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justi...
SIMONE WEIL
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.
SIMONE WEIL
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
SIMONE WEIL
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact ...
SIMONE WEIL
For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends ar...
SIMONE WEIL
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
SIMONE WEIL
To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
SIMONE WEIL
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
SIMONE WEIL
I can, therefore I am.
SIMONE WEIL
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
ALBERT CAMUS
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
ALBERT CAMUS
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.
ALBERT CAMUS
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither t...
ALBERT CAMUS
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a ...
ALBERT CAMUS
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
ALBERT CAMUS
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
ALBERT CAMUS
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as i...
ALBERT CAMUS
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every o...
ALBERT CAMUS
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
ALBERT CAMUS

More Jean De La Bruyere

The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any othe...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Love and friendship exclude each other.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of bein...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are three stages in a person's life, birth, their life and death. They are not conscious of bi...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is p...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among peop...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate yo...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
To be among people one loves, that's sufficient; to dream, to speak to them, to be silent among them...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
If poverty is the mother of crime, lack of good sense is the father.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A slave has but one master. An ambition man, has as many as there are people who helped him get his ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
I would not like to see a person who is sober, moderate, chaste and just say that there is no God. T...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- which seldom happens to us...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquen...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who d...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he w...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no o...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very g...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of ot...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contr...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other te...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A man can keep a secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood. [Fr., On ne trompe point e...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value they put on themselves.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity. [Fr., Les hommes rougissent...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know th...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appe...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Between good sense and good taste there is the difference between cause and effect. [Fr., Entre l...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
If Poverty is the Mother of Crimes, want of Sense is the Father.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love. [Fr., L'on confie son secre...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A slave has but one master. An ambitious man has as many as there are people who helped him get h...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The court is like a palace built of marble; I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polishe...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The wise man sometimes flees from society from fear of being bored.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Rarely do they appear great before their valets. [Fr., Rarement ils sont grands vis-a-vis de leur ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you? [Fr., Vo...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool. [Fr., Du ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The favor of princes does not preclude the existence of merit, and yet does not prove that it exist...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls. [Fr., A...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as can help in making his fortune.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as can help him in making his fortune.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The shortest and best ways to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their int...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and oth...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present - which seldom happens to us.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the pre...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupi...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Liberality lies less in giving liberally than in the timeliness of the gift.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
If you wish to be held in esteem, you must associate only with those who are esteemable
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existenc...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
It is a great misfortune to have the wit to speak, but not the sense when to remain silent.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A strict observer is one who would be an atheist under an atheistic king.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any othe...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Love and friendship exclude each other
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are few finer excesses in the world than an excess of gratitude.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
When life is unhappy it is hard to endure, when it is happy it is terrible to think of it ending. Bo...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
We come too late to say anything which has not been said already
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
He who tip-toes cannot stand; he who strides cannot walk.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The pleasure of criticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, ...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A bigot is a person who, under an atheist king, would be an atheist
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be usef...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Modesty is to merit, as shades to figures in a picture, giving it strength and beauty
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues...
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Love lessens a woman's delicacy and increases a man's.
LA BRUYERE
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
LA BRUYERE
Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.
JEAN DE LA LA FONTAINE
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
People who make no noise are dangerous.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
There is no road of flowers leading to glory.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, no...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Dressed in the lion's skin, the ass spread terror far and wide.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
In short, Luck's always to blame.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
By the work one knows the workman.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
A hungry stomach cannot hear.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
By time and toil we sever What strength and rage could never. [Fr., Patience et longueur de te...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is worth more. [Fr., Rien n'est si da...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous with...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYèRE
Everyone has his faults which he continually repeats: neither fear nor shame can cure them.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Patience and the passage of time do more than strength and fury.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
He knows the universe and does not know himself.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Still people are dangerous.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Luck's always to blame.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
In short, luck's always to blame.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
The argument of the strongest is always the best.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
We read on the foreheads of those who are surrounded by a foolish luxury, that fortune sells what sh...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
The fastidious are unfortunate; nothing satisfies them.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
One returns to the place one came from.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
One often has need of one, inferior to himself.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Every flatterer lives at the expense of him who listens to him.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
By the work one knows the workmen.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Better a living beggar than a buried emperor. [Fr., Mieux vaut goujat debout qu'empereur enterre.]
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Patience and passage of time do more than strength and fury.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
In my end is my beginning.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
We ought to consider the end in everything. [Fr., En toute chose il faut considerer la fin.]
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
He is very foolish who aims at satisfying all the world and his father. [Fr., Est bien fou du cer...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
The fastidious are unfortunate: nothing can satisfy them. [Lat., Les delicats sont malheureux, ...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
The reasoning of the strongest is always the best. [Fr., La raison du plus fort est toujours la me...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE