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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Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Close your eyes and see.

Those thoughts that come to us suddenly and that are not yet ours.

Objects must be described only in order to describe the feelings they envoke in us.

What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them?

Little people have few passions, they hardly have anything but needs.

Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.

Whoever does not see his friends in a good light loves them little. To see in a good light. — Whoever does not see in a good light is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover. Whoever does not see in a good light has not been able to lift his mind up to what is there or his heart to what is good.

What our eyes see, our imagination can no longer see. The same thing cannot be the object of both kinds of seeing.

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it.

Everything we can measure seems small.

The number of books is infinite.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

I am like Montaigne: "unsuited to continuous discourse."

Tenderness is the repose of passion.