Joseph Joubert: Word

“Tacitus. And all those words that are obscure only once.”

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

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

“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.”

“This poetic nudity within words.”

“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.”

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

“Once we have tasted the juice of words, our mind can no longer pass them by. We drink thought from them.”

“All clear and transparent words appear to be beautiful sounds. Yes and no are not precisely clear words, but definite words. In clear words, there is more light than movement or attitude.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.”

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

“There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape.”

“Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words.”

“Thoughts that are light, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts. Words that often retain their meaning even when they are detached from others and that please when isolated as sounds.”

“The child speaks words with his memory long before he speaks them with his tongue.”

“Conversation. — Because they have many of those ideas that, to be shown, have need of eyes, gestures, voice, a whole multitude of signs that the written word does not accompany. One sees the soul in operation.”

“Because they know all the words, they think they know all the truths.”