Quotes from Philibert Joseph Roux

We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.

The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.

That which we know is but little; that which we have a presentiment of is immense; it is in this direction that the poet outruns the learned man.

Friends are rare for, the good reason that men are not common.

We love justice greatly, and just men but little.

History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.

It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

Let us pray! God is just, he tries us; God is pitiful, he will comfort us; let us pray!

God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.

When unhappy, one doubts everything when happy one doubts nothing.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.

A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.

Great souls are harmonious.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.

Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.

To love is to choose.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.