Joubert Quotes

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.

Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.

When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.

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

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

Never be sad for what is over, just be glad it was once yours. Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

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

Chance generally favors the prudent.

Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has.

Strength is natural, but grace is the growth of habit. This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting.

Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.

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

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.

Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

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.

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.

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

Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.

Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.

Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.

Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?

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

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.

God has commanded Time to console the afflicted.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. [Fr., Celui qui a de l'imagination sans erudition a des ailes, et n'a pas de pieds.]

In order to be happy, think of the ills you have been spared.

Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.

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

The early and the latter part of human life are the best, or, at least, the most worthy of respect; the one as the age of innocence, the other of reason.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy

There is an admiration which is the daughter of knowledge.

Slander is the solace of malignity.

A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.

Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty.

How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

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

Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy.

Justice is the truth in action.