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The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.

Jean de la Bruyere
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We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
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
There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.
Jean de la Bruyere
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
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
Jean de la Bruyere
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.
Jean de la Bruyere
Love and friendship exclude each other.
Jean de la Bruyere
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
Jean de la Bruyere
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.
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
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
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 slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.
Jean de la Bruyere
They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
Jean de la Bruyere
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
Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.
Jean de la Bruyere
The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.
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
There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.
Jean de la Bruyere
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.
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 pretty equal to the other.
Jean de la Bruyere
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
Jean de la Bruyere
A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.
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
The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
Jean de la Bruyere
All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
Jean de la Bruyere
The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.
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
One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
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
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
Jean de la Bruyere
We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.
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. They would speak disinterestedly at least, but such a person is not to be found.
Jean de la Bruyere
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
Jean de la Bruyere
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.
Jean de la Bruyere
A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
Jean de la Bruyere
Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
Jean de la Bruyere
The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.
Jean de la Bruyere
A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
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
Man has but three events in his life: to be born, to live, and to die. He is not conscious of his birth, he suffers at his death and he forgets to live.
Jean de la Bruyere
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.
Jean de la Bruyere
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.
Jean de la Bruyere
The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
Jean de la Bruyere
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
Jean de la Bruyere
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
Jean de la Bruyere
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
This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude.
Jean de la Bruyere