Les Caractères or Characters is a collection of satirical essays written by French philosopher Jean de La Bruyère. It was published in 1688.
“To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.”
Rire des gens d'esprit, c'est le privilège des sots.
56
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
Le commencement et le déclin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras où l'on est de se trouver seuls.
Aphorism 33
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur
“Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.”
[I]l semble que le mariage met tout le monde dans son ordre.
Aphorism 25
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”
C'est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l'esprit pour être auteur.
Aphorism 3; Variant translation: It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit
“No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.”
Il n'y a guère d'homme si accompli et si nécessaire aux siens, qu'il n'ait de quoi se faire moins regretter.
Aphorism 35
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Of The Pulpit (8)
Les Caractères (1688)
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.
Aphorism 24
Les Caractères (1688), Des biens de fortune
“Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.”
Aphorism 102
Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme
“A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.”
Amas d'épithètes, mauvaises louanges: ce sont les faits qui louent, et la manière de les raconter.
Aphorism 13
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit
Chassez un chien du fauteuil du Roi, il grimpe à la chaire du prédicateur; il regarde le monde indifféremment, sans embarras, sans pudeur; il n'a pas, non plus que le sot, de quoi rougir.
Aphorism 38
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
“Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.”
Regretter ce que l'on aime est un bien, en comparaison de vivre avec ce que l'on hait.
Aphorism 40
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur
“Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatical”
76
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation
Context: Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatical; he who knows nothing thinks he can teach others what he just now has learned himself; whilst he who knows a great deal can scarcely imagine any one should be unacquainted with what he says, and, therefore, speaks with more indifference.
Aphorism 7
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit
Context: There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!
Aphorism 27
Les Caractères (1688), De la chaire
Context: What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition. Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive to enhance the performance. Any little prepossession in favor of the speaker raises their admiration, and then they do their best to comprehend him; they commend his performance before he has begun, but they soon fall off asleep, doze all the time he is preaching, and only wake to applaud him. An author has no such passionate admirers; his works are read at leisure in the country or in the solitude of the study; no public meetings are held to applaud him.... However excellent his book may be, it is read with the intention of finding it but middling; it is perused, discussed, and compared to other works; a book is not composed of transient sounds lost in the air and forgotten; what is printed remains.
27
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation
Context: To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same thing; they are biting and bitter; their words are steeped in gall and wormwood; sneers as well as insolent and insulting words flow from their lips. It had been well for them had they been born mute or stupid; the little vivacity and intelligence they have prejudices them more than dullness does others; they are not always satisfied with giving sharp answers, they often attack arrogantly those who are present, and damage the reputation of those who are absent; they butt all round like rams — for rams, of course, must use their horns. We therefore do not expect, by our sketch of them, to change such coarse, restless, and stubborn individuals. The best thing a man can do is to take to his heels as soon as he perceives them, without even turning round to look behind him.
Aphorism 44
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Context: That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.
Aphorism 42
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Context: False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.
16
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation
Context: The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you. Most men would rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded.
Aphorism 17
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Context: Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
Aphorism 4
Les Caractères (1688), De la ville
Context: The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appeciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.
