Joseph Joubert Quotes

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Education should be gentle and stern not cold and lax.

The spectacle has changed but our eyes remain the same.

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

Chance usually favors the prudent man.

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

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

Without duty life is soft and boneless.

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

Be charitable and indulgent to every one but thyself.

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

Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, these thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so that they are capable, finally, of maintaining a natural flexibility.All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.

The breath of the mind is attention 128

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

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

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

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

Happy is the man who can do only one thing in doing it he fulfills his destiny.

To teach is to learn twice.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

Everything has its poetry. 94

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.

Happy is the man who can do only one thing: in doing it he fulfills his destiny.

Words like eyeglasses blur everything that they do not make clear.

Luckily I never feel at one time more than half my pains.

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

Children have more need of models than of critics.

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

Never cut what you can untie.

There are those to whom one must advise madness.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

Think of the ills from which you are exempt.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Without duty life is soft and bone less.

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

Tenderness is the repose of passion.

Genius begins great works labor alone finishes it.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102

Without duty life is soft and boneless it cannot hold itself together.