Quotes from Joseph Joubert

I resemble the poplar,--that tree which, even when old, still looks young.

Fear loves the idea of danger.

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

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

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

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

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.

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.

A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will.

TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.

To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.

We should make ourselves loved, for men are only just towards those whom they love.

When we love, it is the heart that judges.

I love prudence very little, if it is not moral.

Justice is the truth in action.

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Chance usually favors the prudent man.

What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Be charitable and indulgent to every one but thyself.

Without duty, life is soft and boneless; it cannot hold itself together.

Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes it.

Think that day lost whose descending sun, views from thy hand no noble action done.

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