“It is sometimes easier to form a party than to attain by degrees the head of a party already formed.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.”
“When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Few men have depth enough to hear or tell the truth.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“A man can hardly be said to have made a fortune if he does not know how to enjoy it.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is no great advantage to possess a quick wit, if it is not correct; the perfection is not speed but uniformity.”
“The tempests of youth are mingled with days of brilliant sunshine.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Nothing endures except truth.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is easier to say new things than to reconcile those which have already been said.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“The best things are the most common.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Obscurity is the kingdom of error.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary, maintain that they ought to be praised in their lifetime if they merit it; but jealousy and calumny, roused against their virtue or their talent, labour to degrade them if any one ventures to bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise.”
“The light of the dawn is not so sweet as the first glimpses of fame.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.”
“Those who fear men like laws.”
“If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute it.”
“The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is good to be firm by temperament and pliant by reflection.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, which study and fortune cannot give.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.”
“Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.”
“Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned.”
“Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.”
“It is proof of a narrow mind when things worthy of esteem are distinguished from things worthy of love. Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as our virtues.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Superficial knowledge ... is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.”
“As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things. Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?”
“As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Great men are sometimes so even in small things.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
