Joseph Joubert Quotes

In the commerce of language use only coin of gold and silver.

To the liberal ideas of the age must be opposed the moral ideas of all ages.

A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.

Lenity is a part of justice; but she must not speak too loud for fear of waking justice.

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that's a good thing born from a bad thing.

Tenderness is the rest of passion.

Close your eyes and you will see.

The early and the latter part of human life are the best, or, at least, the most worthy of respect; the one as the age of innocence, the other of reason.

Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.

We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.

There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.

Moderation consists in being moved as angels are moved.

The evening of a well spent youth brings it's lamps with it.

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Those for whom the world is not enough: saints, conquerors, poets, and all lovers of books.

It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.

To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.

It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.

One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.

Slander is the solace of malignity.

Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.

Our life is woven wind.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.

Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.

In clothes clean and fresh there is a kind of youth with which age should surround itself.

In order to be happy, think of the ills you have been spared.

Children always want to look behind mirrors.

In temperance there is ever cleanliness and elegance.

Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.

A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.

Think of the ills from which you are exempt.

Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench.

Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.

You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.

Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?

Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

Those readiest to criticise are often least able to appreciate.

Figure, movement. Everything happens, says Pascal, from figure and movement. To say in this case that everything happens from movement, for every figure is no more than the lingering trace of a movement that has already ceased. Thus the letters that I am forming now, for example, are only the pen's lingering trace of the movement of my hand.

What can you possibly add to a mind that's full, especially one that's full of itself.

God has commanded Time to console the unhappy

The evening of life brings with it its lamps.

A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.

Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination.

Everything that is exact is short.

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,
that is the secret of the fine arts.

The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.

When we love, it is the heart that judges.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

Proverbs may be said to be the abridgment of wisdom.

Living requires but little life; doing requires much.

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

I love prudence very little, if it is not moral.

We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.

Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.

The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.

I quit Paris unwillingly, because I must part from my friends; and I quit the country unwillingly, because I must part from myself.

Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.

The supreme sway of chastity over the senses makes her queenly.

Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course.

Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.

When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.

The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.

When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.

If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.

Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.

Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has.

The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.

Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet. Joseph Joubert may 16 2002

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Our worries always come from our weaknesses.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy

Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.

Speech is but the incorporation of thought.

Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.

Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.

It is always our inabilities that vex us.

There is graciousness and a kind of urbanity in beginning with men by esteem and confidence. It proves, at least, that we have long lived in good company with others and with our selves.

Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.

It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.

Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.