Art & Creativity Quote by Jean de La Bruyère

A book’s value, La Bruyere insists, can be measured by its aftereffects: not the author’s reputation, not stylistic virtuosity, not even argument, but the internal weather it creates in the reader. The line is deceptively simple, a moral shortcut offered by a master of social diagnosis. In a courtly culture addicted to status markers and performative taste, he proposes an anti-snob test that’s also a deeply partisan one: goodness recognizes goodness. If your spirit rises and your thoughts turn “noble,” you already have your verdict.

That confidence carries subtext. La Bruyere is smuggling in a whole ethic of reading as self-governance. The book is a tool for character formation, not just pleasure or information, and the reader is responsible for wanting the right kinds of transformation. “Seek for no other test” sounds liberating, but it’s also disciplinarian: a rejection of pedantry and critical apparatus in favor of an almost spiritual litmus test. It flatters the reader’s moral intuition while quietly demanding they have one.

The phrase “noble and manly” pins the quote to its era: late-17th-century ideals of virtue coded as masculine, civic, elevated. Today that gendering reads as exclusionary, but it clarifies the original aim: literature as a training ground for public virtue, steadiness, and honor in a world La Bruyere saw as corruptible and vain.

Finally, “good workman” demystifies authorship. The writer isn’t a genius touched by lightning; he’s a craftsman whose moral workmanship shows up in the reader’s improved posture toward life.