Joseph Joubert Quotes

109 Sourced Quotes

Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air.

Joseph Joubert
Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.

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

Joseph Joubert
One of the surest ways of killing a tree is to lay bare its roots. It is the same with institutions. We must not be too ready to disinter the origins of those we wish to preserve. All beginnings are small.

Joseph Joubert
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.

Joseph Joubert
Thoughts there are, that need no embodying, no form, no expression. It is enough to hint at them vaguely; a word, and they are heard and seen.

Joseph Joubert
Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.

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

Joseph Joubert
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.

Joseph Joubert
The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.

Joseph Joubert
Everything is made through images. They enter us through all the other senses, as through the eye. An echo (they say) is an image of the voice. All our affections are produced by images of touching. Our whole body is a mirror.

Joseph Joubert
How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?

Joseph Joubert
Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.

Joseph Joubert
It is better to stir up a question without deciding it, than to decide it without stirring it up.

Joseph Joubert
Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.

Joseph Joubert
I never like evergreen trees. There is something black in their green and cold in their shade, something dry, pointed and prickly in their leaves. As besides, they lose nothing and have nothing to fear, they seem to me without feeling, and therefore interest me little.

Joseph Joubert
There is something divine about the ideas of space and eternity which is wanting in those of pure duration and simple extension.

Joseph Joubert
In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.

Joseph Joubert
If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.

Joseph Joubert
Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!

Joseph Joubert
Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.

Joseph Joubert
Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.

Joseph Joubert
Power makes you attractive; it even makes women love old men.

Joseph Joubert
Every legitimate authority should respect its extent and its limits.

Joseph Joubert
Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.

Joseph Joubert