Inspirational Quotes by Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

Inspirational Quotations by Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

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.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Joseph Joubert

Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Order

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: History

Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Duty, Togetherness

Never cut what you can untie.
—Joseph Joubert

Lenity is a part of mercy, but she must not speak too loud for fear of waking justice.
—Joseph Joubert

Imagination is the eye of the soul.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Imagination

God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself like fire, infinitely.—Light a thousand torches at one torch, and the flame of the latter remains the same.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Intelligence

Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes it.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Labor, Endurance

Tenderness is the rest of passion.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Strength

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Opinion, Opinions, Change

Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the statures of a child and the face of a man.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Pride

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Perspective, Truth, Light

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 aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Arguments, Argument, Perspective

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they may be.
—Joseph Joubert

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Superstition

Ask the young. They know everything.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Youth, Time

He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Friendship, Friends

Politeness is to goodness what words are to thought. It tells not only on the manners, but on the mind and the heart; it renders the feelings, the opinions, the words, moderate and gentle.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Politeness

Justice without strength, or strength without justice—fearful misfortunes!
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Justice

Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that’s a good thing born from a bad thing.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Emotions

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Mystery

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Books

All gardeners live in beautiful places, because they make them so.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Gardening

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Reading, Books

Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions: they do not enlighten, but guide and direct, and though themselves blind, are protecting.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Wisdom

Politeness smoothes wrinkles.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Politeness

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Compassion, Service, Kindness

We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: God