Jean de La Bruyere Quotes

The impossibility I find myself in to prove that God does not exist proves to me his existence.

Those who make poor use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

The flatterer does not have a good opinion of himself or of others.

Most people spend the greater part of their lives making others miserable.

There is a type of shame which comes from being happy at another’s distress.

Children have neither past nor future. They live in the present, something which rarely happens to us.

Children are haughty, disdainful, angry, envious, curious, interested, lazy, fickle, shy, self-indulgent, liars, deceivers…they do not wish to suffer evil, but like to do evil: they are already adults.

There are only three great events for a person: to be born, to live and to die. He does not feel his own birth, he suffers upon death and he forgets to live.

To speak humanely, death has a useful function: it puts an end to old age.

If life is miserable, it is difficult to endure; if it is happy, it is horrible to lose. They come to the same thing.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious person has as many as he needs to make his fortune.

Life is short and bothersome: all we do is desire what we do not have.

What he does tomorrow will be what he did today and yesterday; and he shall die after having lived this way.

How difficult it is to be happy with someone!

Loves die from disgust, and forgetting buries them.

Love which strikes suddenly takes the longest to cure.

Love and friendship exclude one another.

Time, which strengthens friendships, weakens love.

A dispassionate woman is one who has yet to seethe one she should love.

A man keeps another person’s secret better than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her own secrets better than those of others.