Joseph Joubert was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées (Thoughts), which were published posthumously.
From the age of fourteen Joubert attended a religious college in Toulouse, where he later taught until 1776. In 1778 he went to Paris where he met D’Alembert and Diderot, amongst others, and later became a friend of a young writer and diplomat, Chateaubriand.
He alternated between living in Paris with his friends and life in the privacy of the countryside in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He was appointed inspector-general of universities under Napoleon. (via Wikipedia)
Following are a few of the great quotes by Joseph Joubert:
On Kindness:
On Life:
Without duty, life is sort of boneless it cannot hold itself together.
We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.
On Learning:
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
On God:
God is the place where I do not remember the rest.
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
On Religion:
True religion is the poetry of the heart it has enchantments useful to our manners it gives us both happiness and virtue.
Other Quotes:
It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas.
Questions show the mind’s range, and answers its subtlety.
Children always want to look behind mirrors.
We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their own.
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.