“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”

— Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), "Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit"

About Jean de La Bruyère

1645 – 1696

French moralist, author of "Les Caractères" (1688).

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“There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

“We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

“There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence.”

— Jean de La Bruyère

“One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh.”

— Hermann Hesse

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

— Oscar Wilde

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

— Confucius

“If you teach a man anything he will never learn it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”

— Mark Twain

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

— H. L. Mencken

“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”

About Jean de La Bruyère

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