Joseph Joubert Quotes

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.

Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

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

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

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

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

The evening of life brings with it its lamps.

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

Close your eyes and you will see.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Never cut what you can untie.

Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

To teach is to learn twice.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Children need models rather than critics.

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

Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.

The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from?

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

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

Work like you don't need the money.

We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

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

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

Politeness is the flower of humanity.

Luckily, I never feel at one time more than half my pains.

Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.

Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Our worries always come from our weaknesses.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.

Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features

How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound.

Tenderness is the rest of passion.

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 passions of the young are vices in the old.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.

Virtue is the health of the soul.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.