Joseph Joubert Quotes

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.

Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features.

Cercando la parola si trovano i pensieri.

Enseigner, c'est apprendre deux fois

And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.

Luminous words, like those drops of light we see in fireworks.

Madness is an illness of the brain, not of the mind.

You want to talk to someone: first open your ears.

It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost.

Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.

In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent.

Of what must be said and what must not be said. The importance of knowing.

It is not light that burns, that purifies, that consumes, that divides, and that recomposes; it is fire. And this fire we are talking about always follows light.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.