Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) was a French man of letters who wrote on philosophical, moral, and literary topics. He is remembered today largely for his Pensées (Thoughts,) which were published posthumously.
Born in Montignac, Perigord, Joubert studied and taught at the college of Toulouse. He then went to Paris, where he lived through the French Revolution. In 1809, he was nominated inspector-general for the lycées (universities) under Napoleon Bonaparte.
Throughout his life, Joubert wrote in notebooks, on scraps of paper, which he then stored, mostly unclassified, in a case. After his death, his friend François-René de Châteaubriand edited a small volume from Joubert’s papers.
Joubert found fame for the concise, accurate—and, at times, witty—quality of writing in his Recueil des pensées de M. Joubert (1838, also Pensées or ‘Thoughts.’) These are in the best French tradition of François de La Rochefoucauld, Blaise Pascal, and Jean de La Bruyèreand Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues.
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Think of the ills from which you are exempt.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Blessings
The pain of dispute exceeds, by much, its utility.—All disputation makes the mind deaf, and when people are deaf I am dumb.
—Joseph Joubert
Avoid singularity.—There may often be less vanity in following the new modes, than in adhering to the old ones.—It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting them.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Fashion
The spectacle has changed, but our eyes remain the same.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Change
We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: God
Chastity enables the soul to breathe a pure air in the foulest places.—Continence makes her strong, no matter in what condition the body may be.—Her sway over the senses makes her queenly: her light and peace render her beautiful.
—Joseph Joubert
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Grace
In clothes clean and fresh there is a kind of youth with which age should surround itself.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Dress
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Opinions, Change, Opinion
In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Language
To teach is to learn twice.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Teachers, Teaching, Education
Never cut what you can untie.
—Joseph Joubert
It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Happiness
We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Example
Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.
—Joseph Joubert
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Poets, Art, Appreciation, Self-reliance, Try, Confidence, Will, Poetry, Now
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Imagination
All gardeners live in beautiful places, because they make them so.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Gardening
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Ideals, Idealism
Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Consistency
The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Letters
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Appreciation, Thought
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Ambition
God has commanded time to console the unhappy.
—Joseph Joubert
Proverbs may be said to be the abridgments of wisdom.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Proverbs
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Style
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Religion, God
Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes it.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Resolve, Endurance, Perseverance, Labor
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Happiness, Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Thinking
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: History
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