Quotes from Joseph Joubert

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

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

Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

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.

Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.

A man who shows no defect is a fool or a hypocrite, whom we should mistrust. There are defects so bound to fine qualities that they announce them,--defects which it is well not to correct.

There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.

Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.

Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.

Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes

Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

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

Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy.

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

You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.

Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.

Children need models rather than critics.

The spectacle has changed but our eyes remain the same.

Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has.

We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.

Space is the stature of God.