Joseph Joubert

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées published posthumously.

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

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

Ask the young. They know everything.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Children need models rather than critics.

Genius begins great works; labour alone finishes them.

God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound? The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

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

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

Justice is the truth in action.

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Never cut what you can untie.

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

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

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

Politeness is the flower of humanity.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

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

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

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

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

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

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

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

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.

To teach is to learn twice.

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

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

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

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.