"If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction"
About this Quote
Death only becomes “terrible” in La Bruyere’s sentence when it turns into an inequality.
The line is built like a calm little logic puzzle, but it’s really a social critique in disguise. La Bruyere was a moralist at Louis XIV’s court, watching rank, privilege, and arbitrary favor structure everything from titles to pensions. His point isn’t to minimize grief; it’s to reframe what makes suffering feel intolerable. Mortality hurts, yes, but it’s also the one appointment even a king can’t postpone. The shared sentence of death functions as a rough democratic baseline in a world otherwise engineered to be unfair.
So he flips the expected premise. We assume death is inherently a “terrible affliction.” La Bruyere suggests the opposite: what would truly make it monstrous is if it were selective. If some people got to opt out, death would stop being a fact of nature and start looking like a punishment. It would carry the sting of scandal: why them, why not me? The grief would curdle into resentment, the way illness, poverty, and legal trouble feel worse when we can see they are unevenly distributed.
The subtext is almost modern: humans can metabolize pain better than perceived injustice. A universal limit becomes livable because it’s universal; it keeps envy from attaching itself to the last boundary. La Bruyere’s wit is that he praises death not as consolation, but as the only fairness the world reliably delivers.
The line is built like a calm little logic puzzle, but it’s really a social critique in disguise. La Bruyere was a moralist at Louis XIV’s court, watching rank, privilege, and arbitrary favor structure everything from titles to pensions. His point isn’t to minimize grief; it’s to reframe what makes suffering feel intolerable. Mortality hurts, yes, but it’s also the one appointment even a king can’t postpone. The shared sentence of death functions as a rough democratic baseline in a world otherwise engineered to be unfair.
So he flips the expected premise. We assume death is inherently a “terrible affliction.” La Bruyere suggests the opposite: what would truly make it monstrous is if it were selective. If some people got to opt out, death would stop being a fact of nature and start looking like a punishment. It would carry the sting of scandal: why them, why not me? The grief would curdle into resentment, the way illness, poverty, and legal trouble feel worse when we can see they are unevenly distributed.
The subtext is almost modern: humans can metabolize pain better than perceived injustice. A universal limit becomes livable because it’s universal; it keeps envy from attaching itself to the last boundary. La Bruyere’s wit is that he praises death not as consolation, but as the only fairness the world reliably delivers.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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