Joseph Joubert: Making

“Let anger pass, make a place for it; do not impede its progress; do not disturb its development, give it the time it needs to die out, open a wide path for it.”

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

“Everyone makes and has need of making a world other than the one he sees.”

“It is not simply a matter of distinguishing between good and evil, but also of not confusing what is laughable with what is not. To make laughable what is not is in some way to make bad what was good.”

“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.”

“Democracy and slavery are inseparable. Why. Democracy as it existed among the ancients was no more than government by a number of men large enough to be called the people. But this designation is false. The true people, in such a state, the greatest number, the majority belong to the class of slaves, and slavery inevitably develops in a country governed this way, because it is impossible that those who spend their time making laws can make shoes and clothes, plant crops, work fields, etc.”

“They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser.”

“Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse.”

“A stupid lie is one that can never make itself believed.”

“All ways of expressing ourselves are good if they make us understood. Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good.”

“Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.”

“The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error.”

“What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.”

“Anger makes us adroit.”