Joseph Joubert Quotes

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“The mind can only create errors. Truths are not created, they exist; one can only see them, disentangle them, discover them, and expose them.”

“The important business of man is life, and the important business of life is death.”

“What man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.”

“When the last word is always the one that offers itself first, the work becomes difficult.”

“You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth.”

“To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears.”

“We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.”

“Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.”

“To let the reader complete the symmetry between words and do no more than suggest it.”

“Ask the young. They know everything.”

“The time I once lost in pleasure I now lose in suffering.”

“The truth by way of illusion.”

“Wisdom is the strength of the weak.”

“The imagination is the eye of the soul.”

“People of intelligence often treat business in the way ignorant people treat books: they understand nothing.”

“I stop when I see no more light; it is impossible for me to write by feeling my way.”

“Whoever consults the light within himself (it is within everyone) excels at judging the object this light illumines.”

“All these philosophers are no more than surgeons.”

“In this painting of our life given to us by our memories, everything is moving and depends on our point of view.”

“All those whom for style is not a game but a labor.”

“Adventurous minds, which wait for and receieve their ideas only from chance.”

“We are worth more when someone looks at us. And, because of this, an eye is always watching us.”

“An oratorical style often has the same drawbacks as those operas in which the music prevents you from hearing the words. Here the words prevent you from seeing the thoughts.”

“Let us remember that everything is double.”

“Of those who want us to be wrong and those who want us to be right.”

“There is nothing perfectly true for man; I mean in human opinions. Just like there is nothing perfectly round.”

“Speak more softly to be better heard by a deaf public.”

“When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world.”

“This poetic nudity within words.”

“Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.”

“A person who is never duped cannot be a friend.”

“He must not cultivate his friends, but cultivate his friendships within himself. They must be kept, cared for, watered.”

“The voice is an aid to intelligence.”

“To teach is to learn twice over.”

“You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?”

“Fear feeds the imagination.”

“What we say is similar to what we are.”

“Sloth waiting for inspiration.”

“Man loves what is small; and he loves what is big, through the same weakness.”

“One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. One must know how to leave one's own ideas and how to come back to them.”

“Speak for the ear and write for the memory.”

“There must be several voices together in one voice for it to be beautiful. And several meanings in one word for it to be beautiful.”

“Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.”

“And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.”

“All beautiful words are susceptible to more than one meaning (or signification).”

“When men are imbeciles, the one who is mad dominates the others.”

“The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.”

“All things that are easy to say have already been perfectly said.”

“Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.”