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Updated: May 4, 2025
One of the most important qualities of La Bruyère was that he prepared the popular mind for liberty.
This was her favorite theme in our conversations, and was directly opposite to my chimerical ideas, though the kind of instruction I particularly had occasion for. We read Bruyere together; he pleased her more than Rochefoucault, who is a dull, melancholy author, particularly to youth, who are not fond of contemplating man as he really is.
Whether he perceived it or not and I for one am convinced that he did perceive it La Bruyère introduced a new thing into French literature; he opened out, we may almost say, a new world. The classical attitude of the great age had produced splendid manifestations of thought and form.
You are not superstitious, my dear?" Her eyes were on mine. She slowly drew the little gold cross from her bosom and kissed it. But her lips trembled as they pressed the symbol of faith. About nine o'clock the next morning I walked into the Groix Inn and sat down at the long discolored oaken table, nodding good-day to Marianne Bruyere, who in turn bobbed her white coiffe at me.
We take off all those appendages which are extraneous to thee to get at thyself, who art but a ninny." More earnest and less bitter than La Rochefoucauld, and as brilliant and as firm as Cardinal de Retz, La Bruyere was a more sincere believer than either. "I feel that there is a God, and I do not feel that there is none; that is enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me.
La Bruyere possessed the same gift of accurate and penetrating observation of character. He watched and studied everybody about him.
I mentioned in my last chapter Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Certain even more widely known works will occur at once to the memory. I may also mention Pascal, La Bruyere, and Emerson. For myself, you do not catch me travelling without my Marcus Aurelius. Yes, books are valuable. When shall this important business be accomplished?
But although La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère were not the inventors of their respective methods of writing, nor positively isolated in their treatment of social themes, I do not think it is claiming too much for them to say that in the crowd of smaller figures they stand out large, and with each generation larger, in any survey of their century.
Her influence was at its height in the age of Corneille and Descartes, and she lived almost to the culmination of the era of Racine and Moliere, of Boileau and La Bruyere, of Bossuet and Fenelon, the era of simple and purified language, of refined and stately manners, and of at least outward respect for morality. To these results she largely contributed.
It was a great advantage to La Bruyère, and a sign of his genius, that he was able to descend from the pulpit, and walk about among his readers with a smile, recognizing them as reasonable beings. He is persuasive; his forerunners had been denunciatory. He may be harsh and sometimes unjust, but he is never contemptuous to human nature.
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