Joseph Joubert:
(Montignac in Périgord, 7 May 1754 – Paris, 4 May 1824)
French moralist and essayist.
He who does not have the weakness of friendship also lacks its strength.
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
Make what is vice in others a quality in you.
It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him.
Ask the young. They know everything.
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
Everyone is born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.
The beautiful epic, dramatic, lyrical poems are nothing but the dreams of an awakened sage.
The passions of the young are vices in the old.
Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.
God is the place where I don’t remember the rest.
There are opinions that come from the heart, and whoever has no fixed opinion has no constant feelings.
Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.
The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine – but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
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.
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.
Justice is the truth in action.
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
You won’t find poetry anywhere if you don’t bring it with you.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
To teach is to learn twice.
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Never cut what you can untie.
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Innocence is always unsuspicious.
The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
Children need role models more than critics.
The direction of our mind is more important than its progress.
Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
Politeness is the flower of humanity.
Space is to place what eternity is to time.
Make what is vice in others a quality in you.
Freedom is a tyrant, controlled by its whims.
Those who never take back an opinion love themselves more than the truth.
The punishment for bad princes is to be thought worse than they are.
Error agitates; truth rests.
A dream is half a reality.
Friendship is a drought-resistant plant.
We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.
Be gentle and forgiving to everyone; don’t be gentle and forgiving to yourself.
