Joseph Joubert Quotes

Adventurous minds, which wait for and receive their ideas only from chance.

Illusion or play. Everything agreeable is in them.

Memory. — It is a mirror, that retains, and retains forever. Nothing is lost in it, nothing is erased. But it can be tarnished. And then one sees nothing in it.

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.

It is impossible to love the same person twice.

To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions.

Stars more beautiful to the eyes than the telescope that robs them of their illusions.

The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error.

To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears.

What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.

The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.

The weakness of the dying slanders life.

All these philosophers are no more than surgeons.

Don't cut what you can untie.

Imprisoned in our bodies...and our soul has its windows.