Jean de La Bruyère Biography Quotes 59 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Jean de La Bruyère was born on 16 August 1645 in Paris into a bourgeois family. He received a solid humanist education and studied law, qualifying as a lawyer before turning to literary pursuits. His formation immersed him in classical authors and in the French moralist tradition that included Montaigne, Pascal, and La Rochefoucauld, influences that would shape his aphoristic style and ethical preoccupations.

From Law to Letters: Office at Caen
In 1673 La Bruyère purchased the office of trésorier de France in the généralité of Caen, a common path for socially mobile professionals under the Ancien Régime. The post provided income and status without demanding full-time residence, freeing him to read, observe, and write. The financial security and entry into elite circles that came with the office were decisive for his later access to courtly society.

The Condé Household and Court Observation
Introduced by the bishop and orator Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, La Bruyère entered the household of the Condés around 1684 as tutor to Louis III de Bourbon, duc de Bourbon, grandson of the Great Condé (Louis II de Bourbon). He remained attached to the Condé family at Chantilly and frequented Versailles, where he observed aristocratic and courtly manners at close range. These years supplied the raw material for the sharply etched portraits and social analyses that would make his name.

Les Caractères (1688–1694)
La Bruyère's principal work, Les Caractères, appeared in 1688 as a French translation of Theophrastus's Characters accompanied by his own extensive series of "characters" and reflections on the morals and manners of his age. He expanded the book across multiple editions (notably 1689, 1691, 1692, and a substantially augmented edition in 1694), adding chapters, maxims, and portraits.
- Form: A mosaic of aphorisms, sketches, dialogues, brief essays, and satirical "portraits" (figures like Arrias, Gnathon, and Onuphre) that crystallize types rather than individuals, even when contemporaries believed they recognized real persons.
- Range: Sections explore education, conversation, vanity, friendship, love, social rank, fortune, the court, town and country, and literary taste.
- Aim: To instruct by pleasing, marrying wit and moral insight, while measuring modern mores against classical norms of reason, clarity, and measure.

Quarrels, Reception, and the Académie française
Les Caractères was an immediate success and a lightning rod. Admirers praised its stylistic precision and ethical bite; detractors felt targeted by its portraits and social critiques. La Bruyère was drawn into the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, siding with the Ancients alongside Boileau and Racine against figures such as Perrault and Fontenelle. After some resistance from partisans of the Moderns, he was elected to the Académie française in 1693. His reception discourse reaffirmed classical standards and the exemplary value of ancient authors.

Ideas and Style
La Bruyère is classed among the French moralists. He portrays human beings as governed by self-love, vanity, and habit, yet capable of civility, discernment, and probity when guided by reason and a sense of measure. His method is observational and typological: he sketches recurrent social and psychological patterns rather than constructing a system. Stylistically, he pursues exactness, concision, and rhythm, favoring the maxim and the portrait to reveal character in a single stroke. He is both satirist and philosopher of everyday ethics, testing the claims of birth, wealth, and wit against the demands of sincerity and judgment.

People Around La Bruyère
- The Condés: Louis II de Bourbon (the Great Condé), his son Henri-Jules, and his grandson Louis III de Bourbon, La Bruyère's pupil.
- Ecclesiastical and literary patrons and allies: Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet; Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux; Jean Racine; Jean de La Fontaine.
- Adversaries in debates: Charles Perrault and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (Moderns).
- Intellectual kin and sources: Theophrastus (model for the character sketch); François de La Rochefoucauld and Blaise Pascal (moralist lineage).

Final Years and Death
Continuing to revise Les Caractères and participating in Académie affairs, La Bruyère maintained a relatively private life within the Condé orbit. He died suddenly of apoplexy at Versailles on 10 May 1696.

Legacy
La Bruyère's Les Caractères became one of the defining books of French classical prose and a touchstone for satirical and moral analysis in the 18th century and beyond. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and later moral psychologists admired his ability to compress social observation into memorable forms; dramatists and novelists drew on his gallery of types. His work helped fix the French ideal of lucid, exact prose and the moralist's vocation: to observe closely, judge shrewdly, and write with elegance and restraint.

Our collection contains 59 quotes who is written by Jean, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Truth - Justice.

Other people realated to Jean: Voltaire (Writer), Blaise Pascal (Philosopher), Jean de La Fontaine (Poet), Baltasar Gracian (Philosopher), Charles de Secondat (Philosopher), Charles Perrault (Author), Theophrastus (Philosopher), Saint Bernard (Saint)

• La Bruyere Watch: A watch brand/model name seen on some vintage pieces; unrelated to the writer.
• Jean de La Fontaine: Different author: Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), famed for his Fables.
• Jean de La Bruyère oeuvres: Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce siècle (1688); Traduction des Caractères de Théophraste; Discours de réception à l’Académie française (1693).
• Jean de La Bruyère books: Les Caractères (The Characters), incl. his translations of Theophrastus.
• Jean de La Bruyère pronunciation: zhahn də lah brü-YAIR (IPA: ʒɑ̃ də la bʁɥjɛr)
• How old was Jean de La Bruyère? He became 50 years old

• 1688 Les Caractères (Collection)

• Wikipedia