Joseph Joubert
The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.Collection: Writing
Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no featuresCollection: Art
The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.Collection: Military
Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.Collection: Bees
When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.Collection: Worry
How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound.Collection: People
When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.Collection: Art
Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.Collection: Inspirational
Chance generally favors the prudent.Collection: Inspirational
How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!Collection: Strength
Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.Collection: Country
God has commanded Time to console the afflicted.Collection: Unhappy
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.Collection: Order
There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard.Collection: Window
You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.Collection: Rolling Along
TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.Collection: Moments
All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.Collection: Leisure
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.Collection: Iron
Close your eyes and you will see.Collection: Eye
To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.Collection: Journey
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.Collection: Beauty
Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.Collection: Agriculture
We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their ownCollection: May
If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life's evils, nor slight her blessings.Collection: Gratitude
Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.Collection: Appreciate
Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination.Collection: Children
I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men—as base money—the words by which they cheat and are cheated!Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Wise
Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.Collection: Order
It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.Collection: Flower
Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.Collection: Book
A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.Collection: Essence
If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.Collection: Warrior
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.Collection: Friendship
Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.Collection: Exercise
How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?Collection: Book
When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect.Collection: Heart
Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.Collection: Fall
Grace imitates modesty, as politeness imitates kindness.Collection: Kindness
In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.Collection: Gold
Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.Collection: Silence
Tenderness is the rest of passion.Collection: Passion
To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.Collection: Needs
The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.Collection: Heart
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.Collection: Light
We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.Collection: Power
Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience.Collection: Surprise
What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?Collection: Mind