"Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it."

"Solitude gives an I. I that gives solitude. It is in our thoughts, and the one the world gives, in our feelings. Because solitude grows accustomed to seeing, to contemplating; and the world, to acting for itself."

"Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored."

"Thoughts that cannot survive the open air and that evaporate as soon as we take them out of the room. To put them to the test of isolation. Take them out of the book where you found them, they do not endure."

"Pride swells the brain. Vanity carries with it smoke, minds. Hatred tightens the heart. Love warms the lungs. Admiration stops the heart. We breathe through desire. We want to pump up all that delights, and dilates. Sadness is inaction. The love that comes from the blood, the love that comes from the soul."

"Let us remember that everything is double."

"Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse."

"My soul lives in a place where the passions have passed by and where I have known them all."

"We are worth more when someone looks at us. And, because of this, an eye is always watching us."

"Illusion or play. Everything agreeable is in them."

"It is impossible for me to say something foolish without being aware of it."

"To know: it is to see inside oneself."

"Adventurous minds, which wait for and receive their ideas only from chance."

"Stars more beautiful to the eyes than the telescope that robs them of their illusions."

"To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions."

"The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error."

"It is impossible to love the same person twice."

"The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it."

"What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly."

"To think what we do not feel is to lie to ourselves, in the same way that we lie to others when we say to others what we do not think. Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body, and soul."

"To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears."

"All these philosophers are no more than surgeons."

"The weakness of the dying slanders life."

"Memory. — It is a mirror, that retains, and retains forever. Nothing is lost in it, nothing is erased. But it can be tarnished. And then one sees nothing in it."

"Perhaps (and probably) it would be true to say that we cannot conceive of anything except what we can see in our minds."

"It seems there is something spiritual in wine."

"Justice is truth in action."

"It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice."

"Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word."

"The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable."

"Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them."

"We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence."

"The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another."

"It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent."

"Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know."

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool."

"Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained."

"Shortly afterwards the public lost a writer of genius renowned for his style and knowledge of humanity. I speak of La Bruyère, who died of apoplexy at Versailles, after excelling Theophrastes in his own manner, by portraying quite inimitably the men of our time in his Charactèrs. He was a very decent sort of man and excellent company, simple, not at all the pedant, and wholly sincere. I knew him well enough to regret both his death and the books which his age and health had led one to expect from him."

"The Characters of La Bruyère may be regarded as a production of a unique kind. No examples of such a work are to be found in the classics any more than of Télèmaque. The public were struck by a style at once rapid, terse and vigorous, by picturesque expressions, in a word, by a totally new use of the language which did not, however, break its rules; and the numerous allusions contained in the work crowned its success. When La Bruyère showed the manuscript of his work to M. de Malezieu, the latter said to him: "Here is something which will bring you many readers and many enemies." When the generation that was attacked in this book had passed away, its reputation declined. Nevertheless, as there are some books which belong to all time and to all countries, it is probable that it will never be forgotten."

"La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself, a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher."

"One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories."

"Entre le bon sens et le bon goût il y a la différence de la cause à son effet."

"Quel avantage n'a pas un discours prononcé sur un ouvrage qui est écrit! Les hommes sont les dupes de l'action et de la parole, comme de tout l'appareil de l'auditoire. Pour peu de prévention qu'ils aient en faveur de celui qui parle, ils l'admirent, et cherchent ensuite à le comprendre: avant qu'il ait commencé, ils s'écrient qu'il va bien faire; ils s'endorment bientôt, et le discours fini, ils se réveillent pour dire qu'il a bien fait. On se passionne moins pour un auteur: son ouvrage est lu dans le loisir de la campagne, ou dans le silence du cabinet; il n'y a point de rendez-vous publics pour lui applaudir. ... On lit son livre, quelque excellent qu'il soit, dans l'esprit de le trouver médiocre; on le feuillette, on le discute, on le confronte; ce ne sont pas des sons qui se perdent en l'air et qui s'oublient; ce qui est imprimé demeure imprimé."

"Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits."

"La plupart des hommes emploient la meilleure partie de leur vie à rendre l'autre misérable."

"Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois événements: naître, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas naître, il souffre à mourir, et il oublie de vivre."

"Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable."

"L'une des marques de la médiocrité de l'esprit est de toujours conter."

"Rien ne fait mieux comprendre le peu de chose que Dieu croit donner aux hommes, en leur abandonnant les richesses, l'argent, les grands établissements et les autres biens, que la dispensation qu'il en fait, et le genre d'hommes qui en sont le mieux pourvus."