Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Jean de La Bruyère (August 16, 1645 May 10, 1696) was a French essayist and moralist.He was born in Paris, not, as was once thought, at Dourdan (in today's Essonne département) in 1645. His family was middle class, and his reference to a certain Geoffroy de La Bruyère, a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self-ennoblement common in France as in some other countries. Indeed he himself always signed the name Delabruyère in one word, as evidence of this. He could trace his family back at least as far as his great-grandfather, who had been a strong Leaguer. La Bruyère's own father was controller general of finance to the Hôtel de Ville.