Joseph Joubert Quotes & Sayings

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

When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees. — Joseph Joubert

We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality. — Joseph Joubert

The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused. — Joseph Joubert

Justice is the right of the weakest. — Joseph Joubert

We should do good whenever we can and do kindness at all times, for at all times we can. — Joseph Joubert

We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible. — Joseph Joubert

When we love, it is the heart that judges. — Joseph Joubert

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

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

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

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. — Joseph Joubert

In really good acting we should be able to believe that what we hear and see is of our own imagining; it should seem to be to us as a charming dream. — Joseph Joubert

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them. — Joseph Joubert

There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment. — Joseph Joubert

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

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

We measure minds by their stature; it would be better to esteem them by their beauty. — Joseph Joubert

Grief - Happiness is to feel that one's soul is good; there is no other, in truth, and this kind of happiness may exist even in sorrow, so that there are griefs perfable to every joy, and such as would be preferred by all those who have felt them. — Joseph Joubert

All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure. — Joseph Joubert

Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre. — Joseph Joubert

All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb. — Joseph Joubert

Politeness is the flower of humanity. — Joseph Joubert

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. — Joseph Joubert

Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet? — Joseph Joubert

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings. — Joseph Joubert

Ask the young. They know everything. — Joseph Joubert

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent. — Joseph Joubert

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed. — Joseph Joubert

Forms of government become established of themselves. They shape themselves, they are not created. We may give them strength and consistency, but we cannot call them into being. Let us rest assured that the form of government can never be a matter of choice: it is almost always a matter of necessity. — Joseph Joubert

God has commanded Time to console the unhappy — Joseph Joubert

Imagination is the eye of the soul — Joseph Joubert

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

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

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

Minds which never rest are subject to many digressions. — Joseph Joubert

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred, that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering, that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity. — Joseph Joubert

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

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. — Joseph Joubert

It would be next to impossible to discover a handsome woman who was not also a vain woman. — Joseph Joubert

Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives a flavor to the smallest leaves of life. — Joseph Joubert

If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success. — Joseph Joubert

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

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

In bringing up a child, think of its old age. — Joseph Joubert

Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent. — Joseph Joubert

Taste is the literary conscience of the soul. — Joseph Joubert

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

The evening of life brings with it its lamps. — Joseph Joubert

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. — Joseph Joubert

We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their own — Joseph Joubert

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself. — Joseph Joubert

What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm. — Joseph Joubert

We shall always keep a spare corner in our heads to give passing hospitality to our friends' opinion. — Joseph Joubert

You want to talk to someone; first open your ears. — Joseph Joubert

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk. — Joseph Joubert

The breath of the mind is attention 128 — Joseph Joubert

Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them. — Joseph Joubert

When my friends lack an eye, I look at them in profile. — Joseph Joubert

We should make ourselves loved, for men are only just towards those whom they love. — Joseph Joubert

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

Speech is but the incorporation of thought. — Joseph Joubert

There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard. — Joseph Joubert

Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom. — Joseph Joubert

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

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

Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them. — Joseph Joubert

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

The paper is patient, but the reader is not. — Joseph Joubert

God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself, like fire, ad infinitum. Light a thousand torches at one touch, the flame remains always the same. — Joseph Joubert

A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball. — Joseph Joubert

Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders. — Joseph Joubert

There is an admiration which is the daughter of knowledge. — Joseph Joubert

Fear loves the idea of danger. — Joseph Joubert

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

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

Good maxims are the germs of all excellence. — Joseph Joubert

The soul paints itself in our machines. — Joseph Joubert

When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect. — Joseph Joubert

Ornaments were invented by modesty. — Joseph Joubert

Contempt for private wrongs was one of the features of ancient morals. — Joseph Joubert

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. — Joseph Joubert

To teach is to learn twice. — Joseph Joubert

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting. — Joseph Joubert

Think that day lost whose descending sun, views from thy hand no noble action done. — Joseph Joubert

The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one's soul. — Joseph Joubert

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force. — Joseph Joubert

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

The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning. — Joseph Joubert

To teach is to learn twice. About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard. The purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place to spend one's leisure. — Joseph Joubert

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

Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute. — Joseph Joubert

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

TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth. — Joseph Joubert

Fate and necessity are unconquerable. — Joseph Joubert

Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective. — Joseph Joubert

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty! — Joseph Joubert

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. — Joseph Joubert

Antiquity! I like its ruins better than its reconstructions. — Joseph Joubert

Our life is woven wind. — Joseph Joubert