Book detail: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The volume offers readers a curated selection of insights and wisdom from the works of Jean de La Bruyère and Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Vauvenargues. These selections are drawn from their respective collections of characters, reflections, and maxims, showcasing their philosophical and moral perspectives.
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“Consciousness of our strength increases it.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Few maxims are true in every respect.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We discover in ourselves what others hide from us and we recognize in others what we hide from ourselves.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We are not greatly pleased that our friends should respect our good qualities if they venture to perceive our faults.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“No one likes to be pitied for his faults.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“We must not be timid from a fear of committing faults: the greatest fault of all is to deprive oneself of experience.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Fools do not understand men of intelligence.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Necessity embitters the evils which it cannot cure.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Necessity moderates more troubles than reason.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“Peace renders nations happier and men weaker.”
Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims
“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
“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
“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 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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