Top 294 Quotes & Sayings by Joseph Joubert - Page 3

Slander is the solace of malignity.

Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.

The mind's direction is more important than its progress.

To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.

Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it... GET RICH QUICK! Count your blessings... Stop telling GOD how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your GOD is!!!!!! Contentment begins where comparison ends. The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.

Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.

The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.

Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.

Of what delights are we deprived by our excesses!

Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.

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

Abuse of words is the foundation of ideology.

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.

Chance generally favors the prudent.

It is easier to be mistaken about the true than the beautiful.

In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.

All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Close your eyes and you will see.

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

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

Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.

We measure minds by their stature; it would be better to esteem them by their beauty.

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

National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.

We should do good whenever we can and do kindness at all times, for at all times we can.

Common sense suits itself to the ways of the world. Wisdom tries to confirm to the ways of heaven.

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.

Without duty, life is soft and boneless.

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

The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.

Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.

Genuine witticisms surprise those who say them as much as those who listen to them; they arise in us in spite of us, or, at least, without our participation,--like everything inspired.

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

Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders.

Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.

Minds which never rest are subject to many digressions.

You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.

Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from?

The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them always.

Justice is the right of the weakest.

The simple-hearted and sincere never do more than half deceive themselves.

Our life is woven wind.

Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?

Fear loves the idea of danger.

The breath of the mind is attention.

Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.

The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.

There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

There are those to whom one must advise madness.

All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.

Contempt for private wrongs was one of the features of ancient morals.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy