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

— 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.”

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“If music be the food of love, play on.”

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“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.”

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“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

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

About Jean de La Bruyère

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