Joseph Joubert Quotes

Date of Birth: May 7, 1754    Date of Death: May 4, 1824

We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.  ~ Joseph Joubert


It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.  ~ Joseph Joubert


God is the place where I do not remember the rest.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Luckily, I never feel at one time more than half my pains.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.  ~ Joseph Joubert


It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.  ~ Joseph Joubert


He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.  ~ Joseph Joubert


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


Ask the young. They know everything.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Misery is almost always the result of thinking.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Imagination is the eye of the soul.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Never cut what you can untie.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Space is the stature of God.  ~ Joseph Joubert


A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Children need models rather than critics.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Justice is the truth in action.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The passions of the young are vices in the old.  ~ Joseph Joubert


There are those to whom one must advise madness.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.  ~ Joseph Joubert


When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees.  ~ Joseph Joubert


To teach is to learn twice.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Politeness is the flower of humanity.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Space is to place as eternity is to time.  ~ Joseph Joubert


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


There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.  ~ Joseph Joubert


All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.  ~ Joseph Joubert


We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.  ~ Joseph Joubert


The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Children always want to look behind mirrors.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Education should be gentle and stern, not cold and lax.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.  ~ Joseph Joubert


It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Innocence is always unsuspicious.  ~ Joseph Joubert


Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.  ~ Joseph Joubert


When my friends lack an eye, I look at them in profile.  ~ Joseph Joubert