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
We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: God
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Argument
Never cut what you can untie.
—Joseph Joubert
Questions show the mind’s range, and answers its subtlety.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Questions, Questioning
You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Poetry
Children need models rather than critics.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Criticism, Children
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Optimism, Thinking, Happiness
To teach is to learn twice.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Teaching, Education, Teachers
We may convince others by our arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Women
God has commanded time to console the unhappy.
—Joseph Joubert
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
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
Proverbs may be said to be the abridgments of wisdom.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Proverbs
Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Words
All gardeners live in beautiful places, because they make them so.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Gardening
Children have more need of models than of critics.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Example, Children
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 them.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Labor, Genius
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
Ask the young. They know everything.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Youth, Time
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: The Mind, Mind
The spectacle has changed, but our eyes remain the same.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Change
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Imagination
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Kindness, Service, Compassion
In bringing up a child, think of its old age.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Children
What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts.—Illusion on a ground of truth, that is the secret of the fine arts.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Art
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praise worthy.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Necessity
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
—Joseph Joubert
Topics: Friends, Friendship
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle French Man of Letters
- Michel de Montaigne French Essayist
- Andre Gide French Novelist
- Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues French Moralist
- Albert Camus Algerian-born French Philosopher
- Marcel Proust French Novelist
- Ken Kesey American Novelist
- Jorge Luis Borges Argentine Writer
- Giacomo Leopardi Italian Poet
- Miguel de Unamuno Spanish Philosopher, Writer
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