Quotes from Joseph Joubert

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

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one's soul.

If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life's evils, nor slight her blessings.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

God has commanded Time to console the afflicted.

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.

Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench.

Ask the young. They know everything.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

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

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

Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.

We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own

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

Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.

To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.

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

A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.

The style is the thought itself.

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

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.