Joseph Joubert Quotes (105 Quotes)

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

Ornaments were invented by modesty.

There is a physical weakness which stems from mental ability, and a mental weakness which comes from physical ability.

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

Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features.

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

Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

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

Children have more need of models than of critics.

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

Chance generally favors the prudent.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Justice is the truth in action.

Children need models more than they need critics.

Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

The mind's direction is more important than its progress.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

It is better to stir up a question without deciding it, than to decide it without stirring it up. It is better to debate a question without deciding it than to decide it without debating it.

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

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

Tenderness is the rest of passion.

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.

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

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

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

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.

Never cut what you can unravel.

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

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

Great minds are those that disguise their limits, that mask their mediocrity.

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

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.

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

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

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

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

Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course.

Children need models rather than critics.

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

Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them

Never cut what you can untie.