A Quote by Joseph Joubert

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms.

Joseph Joubert

Quote Topics

Blossoms Come Degree Idea Ideas Lack Last Never Perfection Soon Word Words

Quote Author

Joseph Joubert
French - Writer
May 7, 1754 - May 4, 1824

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.

Joseph Joubert

We tend to forget that words are, themselves, ideas. They might be called ideas in a state of suspended animation. When the words are mastered the ideas tend to come alive again.

James Webb Young

We need a safe place, a reserve of truth, a place where words kindle ideas and set ideas sparking off in others, a word sanctuary. Poetry is this gathering place of words.

Allison Mackie

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.

Suzy Kassem

Words. I'm surrounding by thousands of words. Maybe millions...Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs...I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.

Sharon M. Draper

One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words - an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words - is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

Virginia Woolf

All the creatures are pleased by loving words; and therefore we should address words that are pleasing to all, for there is no lack of sweet words.

Chanakya

Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words.

John Wesley Powell

A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.

G. H. Hardy

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.

David Frum

I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

Henry Rollins

Thus, words being symbols of ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words. The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories.

James Webb Young

The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.

Antoine Lavoisier

The idea of political content is irrelevant. Content is irrelevant. I always tell my students, "Never forget you're writing words! You know, word one, word two, word three, word four. The words have to be organized. Nothing else does."