Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Jean de La Bruyère

French Writer, Moralist, "The Theophrastus of France"

"It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues."

"Love and friendship exclude each other. "

"The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest. "

"The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile? "

"The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things. "

"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. "

"This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude."

"Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings. "

"Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late. "

"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."

"The first thing men do when they have renounced pleasure, through decency, lassitude, or for the sake of health, is to condemn it in others. Such conduct denotes a kind of latent affection for the very things they left off; they would like no one to enjoy a pleasure they can no longer indulge in; and thus they show their feelings of jealousy."