Joseph Joubert quotes:

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The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.
Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Justice is the truth in action.
Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.
God is the place where I do not remember the rest.
Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it... GET RICH QUICK! Count your blessings... Stop telling GOD how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your GOD is!!!!!! Contentment begins where comparison ends. The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.
It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.
A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
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.
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.
All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.
Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.
Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.
We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.
Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.
Think that day lost whose descending sun, views from thy hand no noble action done.
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
Space is to place as eternity is to time.
The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.
Fear loves the idea of danger.
Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.
How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy, sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their fortune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die - but asleep!
There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.
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.
In the commerce of language use only coin of gold and silver.
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.
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another....
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.
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.
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
Speech is but the incorporation of thought.
Innocence is always unsuspicious.
Education should be gentle and stern, not cold and lax.
Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes
Work like you don't need the money.
Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features
Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.
Children need models rather than critics.
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.
Politeness is the flower of humanity.
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.
The paper is patient, but the reader is not.
Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it
Be charitable and indulgent to everyone but thyself
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
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
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Those for whom the world is not enough: saints, conquerors, poets, and all lovers of books.
The breath of the mind is attention 128
I quit Paris unwillingly, because I must part from my friends; and I quit the country unwillingly, because I must part from myself.
Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
To teach is to learn twice.
Tenderness is the rest of passion.
Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.
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.
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.
Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.
Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Ask the young. They know everything.
Virtue is the health of the soul.
Never cut what you can untie.
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.
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.
Luckily, I never feel at one time more than half my pains.
Avoid singularity. There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them.
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.
Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.
Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.
It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102
Abuse of words is the foundation of ideology.
Never be sad for what is over, just be glad it was once yours. Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.
Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.
To be capable of respect is almost as rare as to be worthy of it.
Without duty, life is soft and boneless.
Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.
All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.
Living requires but little life; doing requires much.
Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Everything that is exact is short.
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!
If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.
God has commanded Time to console the unhappy
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.
Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.
Fate and necessity are unconquerable.
A temperate style is alone classical.
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy
All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.
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.
One day, a daughter of Aristotle, Pythias by name, was asked what color pleased her most. She replied, "The color with which modesty suffuses the face of simple, inoffensive men.
The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.
Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.
Our life is woven wind.
We should make ourselves loved, for men are only just towards those whom they love.

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