There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads on the heels of great and unexpected riches.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Courage, Living, Poverty
The pleasure of criticism takes from us that of being deeply moved by very beautiful things.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Critics, Criticism
If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose. So the one is pretty equal to the other.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Life, Life and Living
We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Society
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty
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
Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Intelligence, Taste, Style
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
Topics: Power
Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for them that the bargain is a loss.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wealth, Riches
They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Living, Life
He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Poverty, Riches
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
Topics: Books, Reading
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Art, Critics, Criticism
Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Appreciation, Man, Values
There are three stages in a person’s life, birth, their life and death. They are not conscious of birth submit to death and forget to live.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Living, Life
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Happiness, Laughter, Acting As If
As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Wealth, Riches, Prosperity
There are only two ways of getting on in the world; by one’s own industry, or by the stupidity of others.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Work, Ambition, Getting Ahead
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Topics: Miracles, Difficulty
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