“The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.”Joseph Joubert
“It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost.”Joseph Joubert
“The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.”Joseph Joubert
“Someone said of an asthmatic who was being very sweet and patient in his suffering: "One would like to breathe for him."”Joseph Joubert
“What our eyes see, our imagination can no longer see. The same thing cannot be the object of both kinds of seeing.”Joseph Joubert
“It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice.”Joseph Joubert