16 August:Jean de la Bruyere

16 August 1645 was the birthdate of Jean de la Bruyere, French writer and moralist famous for his work Characters of Theophratus.

1. Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
2. Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
3. One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
4. Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
5. Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
6. Out of difficulties grow miracles.
7. It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgement to hold their tongues.
8. A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
9. 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.
10. 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.