Quotes from Joseph Joubert

Never cut what you can untie.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make clear.

Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.

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

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.

The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them always.

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

To teach is to learn twice.

Work like you don't need the money.

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

To the liberal ideas of the age must be opposed the moral ideas of all ages.

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.

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

Drawing is speaking to the eye talking is painting to the ear.

The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.

There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.

Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

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

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.

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