Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Jean La Bruyère

Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little.

A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women; forgets that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young, now only makes her look the older. Affectation cleaves to her even in sickness and pain; she dies in a high-head and coloured ribbons.

Cunning leads to knavery; it is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery: lying only makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

He is good that does good to others. If he suffers for the good he does, he is better still; and if he suffers from them to whom he did good, he is arrived to that height of goodness, that nothing but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if it proves his death, his virtue is at its summit,—it is heroism complete.

Never risk a joke, even the least offensive in its nature, and the most common, with a person who is not well bred, and possessed of sense to comprehend it.

If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us, which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it: so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension.

Some young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of Heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their times and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures consists in promoting the pleasures of others.