Joseph Joubert Quotes - Page 5

Politeness is the flower of humanity.

The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.

When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.

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.

Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.

How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound.

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

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

When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.

The evening of life brings with it its lamps.

Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.

Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.

How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!

God has commanded Time to console the afflicted.

Chance generally favors the prudent.

There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard.

If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life's evils, nor slight her blessings.

You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.

Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.

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

Close your eyes and you will see.

Of what delights are we deprived by our excesses!

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

All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.

Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.