Joseph Joubert Quotes

French moralist and essayist

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Joseph Joubert (7 May 1754 – 4 May 1824) was a French moralist and essayist. He published nothing during his lifetime; after his death in 1824, Joubert's widow entrusted his manuscripts to François-René de Chateaubriand, who published a short selection of them for private circulation, under the title Recueil des Pensées de M. Joubert (Collected Thoughts of Mr. Joubert) (Paris, 1838). This volume was subsequently re-edited with many additions by Paul Raynal, a nephew of the author, under the new title of Pensées, Essais, Maximes et Correspondance de J. Joubert (Thoughts, Essays, Maxims and Correspondence of J. Joubert) (Paris, 1842). A selection from his correspondence was published in 1883.

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Tenderness is the repose of passion.

Perhaps (and probably) it would be true to say that we cannot conceive of anything except what we can see in our minds.

Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

He must not cultivate his friends, but cultivate his friendships within himself. They must be kept, cared for, watered.

Pride swells the brain. Vanity carries with it smoke, minds. Hatred tightens the heart. Love warms the lungs. Admiration stops the heart. We breathe through desire. We want to pump up all that delights, and dilates. Sadness is inaction. The love that comes from the blood, the love that comes from the soul.

To speak with his imagination, but to think with his reason.

Children need models rather than critics.

We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.

How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy, sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their for-tune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die — but asleep!

It is impossible for me to say something foolish without being aware of it.

Let us remember that everything is double.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

To think what we do not feel is to lie to ourselves, in the same way that we lie to others when we say to others what we do not think. Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body, and soul.