The thought is genuinely La Bruyère’s: it stands as aphorism 108 of “Des jugements” in Les Caractères (1688), and the French sentence can be read there today. What is not pinned down is the English — this familiar wording matches no published translation that could be located, and the reference that prints it ↗ credits no translator.
“There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste” Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), “Des jugements,” no. 108. The French original is documented; this English wording is an unattributed translation. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.”
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In context
Evoking the world of Jean de La Bruyère — French philosopher & moralist, author of Les Caractères. Theme: "There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
Where the line actually is
Work
Les Caractères
First published
1688
Location
“Des jugements,” aphorism 108
Translation
English wording carries no translator credit; not Van Laun (1885)
Il n’y a point de chemin trop long à qui marche lentement et sans se presser ; il n’y a point d’avantages trop éloignés à qui s’y prépare par la patience.
Aphorism 108
Les Caractères, “Des jugements” — the sentence as printed, unnumbered, in the Flammarion 1880 text on French Wikisource, which separates the aphorisms with pilcrows rather than numbering them. The number 108 is the standard numbering, confirmed against Van Laun 1885, “Of Opinions,” §108, where the same preceding aphorism (the hundred-million-years passage) is §107. The circulating English — “There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience” — is a rendering of this sentence, published without a translator’s name.
This exact English wording is printed beside the French and cited to Les Caractères (1688), “Des jugements,” aphorism 108 — with no translator named — on Wikiquote’s “Patience” page ↗.
The standard Victorian English version reads quite differently. Henri Van Laun’s translation gives aphorism 108 of “Of Opinions” as “No way is too tedious for him who travels slowly and without being in a hurry; no advantages are too remote for those who have patience” — see the full 1885 translation at Project Gutenberg ↗.
The French text of Les Caractères (1688) is long out of copyright, and Henri Van Laun’s English translation (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885) is public domain in the United States. This particular English wording, though, has no identified translator and no known first publication date — so no rights status can honestly be asserted for it.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The wording, not the author
This is not a case of a famous name being handed someone else’s line. La Bruyère wrote the sentence. The soft spot is the English it travels in.
✕
The translationNo named translator unsigned
The circulating English matches no published translation that could be located. Henri Van Laun’s 1885 version ↗ renders the same aphorism as “No way is too tedious for him who travels slowly and without being in a hurry.” The reference work that does print the familiar wording, Wikiquote ↗, credits no translator at all.
~
The second clause“honours” standing in for “avantages” loose rendering
La Bruyère wrote avantages — advantages, benefits — in the French text ↗, and Van Laun translated it that way. Turning them into “honours” narrows a general claim about patient effort into one about status and preferment. A defensible choice, but not a literal one.
✓The sentence is real and precisely locatable: Les Caractères (1688), “Des jugements,” aphorism 108 — read the French ↗. It is the English, not the attribution, that is unsourced.
Context
Why this one is unusual
Most lines pinned to a famous moralist dissolve when you go looking for the page. This one does the opposite. Les Caractères is a numbered book — each chapter is a run of short, separately numbered reflections — so “Des jugements,” no. 108 is a precise address, and the French sits there exactly as advertised, a few lines after La Bruyère’s remark about how slight an experience of six or seven thousand years really is.
The English is the loose part. La Bruyère wrote avantages; the popular version makes them “honours,” and gives “marche lentement et sans se presser” the rather grander “advances deliberately and without undue haste.” It reads well — better, arguably, than the Victorian rendering — but nobody has signed it, which is why this page stops short of calling the quotation verified.
The French is easy to find. The English is the part nobody signed.
Read the full story
Henri Van Laun’s The “Characters” of Jean de La Bruyère (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885) is the most widely available complete English version and keeps La Bruyère’s own numbering, which is how aphorism 108 can be checked against the French one sentence at a time. It renders the chapter title “Des jugements” as “Of Opinions.”
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1645–1696 · French philosopher & moralist, author of Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire, born 16 August 1645 and dead on 11 May 1696. His one enduring book, Les Caractères, first appeared in 1688 and kept growing — the fourth edition of 1689 added especially heavily — as he went on inserting fresh portraits of his contemporaries. The result is less a treatise than a mosaic of short character sketches and one-line judgements on the manners of his age, of which this sentence is one.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Source
Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), "Des jugements," no. 108. English wording as printed, without translator credit, in Wikiquote, "Patience." Compare Henri Van Laun, trans., The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885), "Of Opinions," no. 108.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-is-no-road-too-long-to-the-man-who-advances/