Top 100 Joseph Joubert Quotes
#2. The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.
Joseph Joubert
#4. There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.
Joseph Joubert
#6. Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.
Joseph Joubert
#7. Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives a flavor to the smallest leaves of life.
Joseph Joubert
#8. The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.
Joseph Joubert
#9. If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.
Joseph Joubert
#10. 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
#11. Those readiest to criticise are often least able to appreciate.
Joseph Joubert
#12. The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power.
Joseph Joubert
#13. God is the place where I do not remember the rest.
Joseph Joubert
#14. Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.
Joseph Joubert
#15. It would be next to impossible to discover a handsome woman who was not also a vain woman.
Joseph Joubert
#16. Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
Joseph Joubert
#18. Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.
Joseph Joubert
#19. The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry
Joseph Joubert
#20. It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.
Joseph Joubert
#21. Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
Joseph Joubert
#22. The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
Joseph Joubert
#23. Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.
Joseph Joubert
#24. The passions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred maybe a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the passions pure, makes them stronger, more durable, and more enjoyable.
Joseph Joubert
#26. The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.
Joseph Joubert
#27. 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
#28. Grace imitates modesty, as politeness imitates kindness.
Joseph Joubert
#30. Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.
Joseph Joubert
#32. We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
Joseph Joubert
#33. There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment.
Joseph Joubert
#35. There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
Joseph Joubert
#36. National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.
Joseph Joubert
#37. How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound.
Joseph Joubert
#38. 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
#39. We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
Joseph Joubert
#40. Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.
Joseph Joubert
#42. When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees.
Joseph Joubert
#43. Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.
Joseph Joubert
#44. Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.
Joseph Joubert
#46. 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
#47. Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has.
Joseph Joubert
#49. 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.
Joseph Joubert
#50. 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
#51. TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.
Joseph Joubert
#52. When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.
Joseph Joubert
#53. All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.
Joseph Joubert
#54. Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.
Joseph Joubert
#56. Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent.
Joseph Joubert
#58. Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.
Joseph Joubert
#59. 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
#61. You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.
Joseph Joubert
#62. Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience ...
Joseph Joubert
#63. 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
#67. Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!
Joseph Joubert
#68. Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination.
Joseph Joubert
#69. A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Joseph Joubert
#70. Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
Joseph Joubert
#72. Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.
Joseph Joubert
#73. Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
Joseph Joubert
#74. Living requires but little life; doing requires much.
Joseph Joubert
#75. Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.
Joseph Joubert
#76. All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
Joseph Joubert
#77. In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.
Joseph Joubert
#78. The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Joseph Joubert
#80. Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.
Joseph Joubert
#81. Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
Joseph Joubert
#82. Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.
Joseph Joubert
#83. Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.
Joseph Joubert
#84. Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.
Joseph Joubert
#85. Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Joseph Joubert
#86. It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.
Joseph Joubert
#87. 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
#88. Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.
Joseph Joubert
#89. Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.
Joseph Joubert
#90. In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.
Joseph Joubert
#91. There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.
Joseph Joubert
#93. History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
Joseph Joubert
#94. When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.
Joseph Joubert
#95. There is an admiration which is the daughter of knowledge.
Joseph Joubert
#96. There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.
Joseph Joubert
#98. Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.
Joseph Joubert
#100. 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.
Joseph Joubert
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