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.

Children need models rather than critics.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

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?

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

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

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

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.

Work like you don't need the money.

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

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

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

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

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.

A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.

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

Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.

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.

Our worries always come from our weaknesses.

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.

The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.

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.

Tenderness is the rest of passion.

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.

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

Virtue is the health of the soul.

Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.

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