Philibert Joseph Roux quotes:

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The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.
Not all of those to whom we do good love us, neither do all those to whom we do evil hate us.
We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.
Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!
A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.
A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.
Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex.
Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.
When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.
At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.
Certain names always awake certain prejudices.
Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.
Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.
Friends are rare for, the good reason that men are not common.
Generosity is more charitable than wealth.
Great souls are harmonious.
Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.
Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.
As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.
Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment.
Everything that is exquisite hides itself.
Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.
God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.
God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.
Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.
Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.
History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.
In youth one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears
It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.
It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.
Length of saying makes languor of hearing.
Let us pray! God is just, he tries us; God is pitiful, he will comfort us; let us pray!
Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them.
Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse.
Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.
Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.
No labor is hopeless.
Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.
Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.
Persons of delicate taste endure stupid criticism better than they do stupid praise.
Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the desire experienced for its torments.
Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.
Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.
Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.
Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.
Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.
Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.
Success causes us to be more praised than known.
That which deceives us and does us harm, also undeceives us and does us good.
That which we know is but little; that which we have a presentiment of is immense; it is in this direction that the poet outruns the learned man.
The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.
The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.
The egoist does not tolerate egoism.
The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.
The habit of prayer communicates a penetrating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the smile, the tears,--to all one says, or does, or writes.
The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.
The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the morning and the dew of the evening; ros matutinum, ros serotinum! Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears! when young, he will bear flowers; when old, fruit!
The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.
The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.
There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.
There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.
To love is to choose.
We are more conscious that a person is in the wrong when the wrong concerns ourselves.
We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough.
We love justice greatly, and just men but little.
We often experience more regret over the part we have left, than pleasure over the part we have preferred.
We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.
What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.
What is love? two souls and one flesh; friendship? two bodies and one soul.
What is slander? A verdict of "guilty" pronounced in the absence of the accused, with closed doors, without defence or appeal, by an interested and prejudiced judge.
When unhappy, one doubts everything when happy one doubts nothing.
I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.
Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

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