Joseph Joubert Quotations

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

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

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

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

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

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

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

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

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

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

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

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

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

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

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.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

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.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

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

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

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

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

God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

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

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

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

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

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Only choose in marriage a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man

I've discovered that in order to make big changes in the world, we have to begin at home -- within ourselves

Some people say that success equals money, but frankly, I don't think success is money at all ... Success is being the best at whatever you want to do well at.

A couple of pieces of advice for the kids who are serious about writing are: first of all, to read everything you can get your hands on so you can become familiar with different forms of writing: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism. That's very important. And also keep a journal. Not so much, because it's good writing practice. Although it is, but more because it's a wonderful source of story starters.

I wonder how you say goodbye to someone forever?

Fight your battles with words, not fists

I believe you are one of the people that can lift the corners of the universe.

It's great that there are so many different kinds of books for kids and adults to choose from. I think an eclectic reader is the best kind of reader to be, which would be why I was always so satisfied to hear that kids read the Baby-Sitters Club books and then went on and discovered other authors and other genres.

Because, you see, you only need one friend for a party. One is enough. Two is enough. Anything is enough.' ~pg 107; Adam on friendship

Some days,' I say, 'I feel like I don't belong anywhere in that world. That world out there. 'I point to Grant. 'People walk down our street and people drive down it and people ride their bicycles down it and all of them, even the ones I know, could be from another planet. And I'm a visiting alien.' And aliens don't belong anywhere,' Adam finishes for me, 'except in their own little corners of the universe.' Right,' I say. ~pgs 57-58 Hattie and Adam on alienation

It was the kind of terrified look that reminds you that no matter how rational or grown up a person might seem, some part of him is absolutely sure - knows - that an evil other-world exists just outside of our regular, everyday world. And that although we don't expect that world to collide with our calm, predictable one...well, really, at any moment that is exactly what might happen.

If you're very serious about writing it's helpful to find an agent. It's becoming more and more competitive to have your manuscript even looked at by an editor. Many companies don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, so they'll pay more attention to something that comes in through an agent.

For now, I just want things all safe and familiar. My life may not be perfect, but it is what I have known.

I love to read, and I don't believe that you have to finish one book before you start another. --Mallory Pike

I am fairly certain that my independent, high-spirited grandmother must have had a childhood similar to Betsy Ray'sAs I read about the School Entertainment and ice cream socials, about ladies leaving calling cards and the milkman with his horse-drawn wagon, I felt that I was having an unexpected and welcome peek into Granny's childhood-a gift to me from Maud Hart Lovelace

There's so many different kinds of rights to consider these days: computer, e-book, all sorts of things. Forget foreign rights and entertainment rights. There are so many things to consider and an agent is going to know how to wade through all that much better than you are.

Cats definitely have their own opinions.

You got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative. Don't mess with Mr. In Between.

I want her back" I said "I want HIM back"~Charlie

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

We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own

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

It is better to stir up a question without deciding it than to decide it without stirring it up

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

There are some minds like either convex or concave mirrors, which represent objects such as they receive them, but never receive them as they are

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

When my friends are one-eyed, I look at their profile

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

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

Words, like glasses, obscure everything which they do not make clear.

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

Without duty, life is soft and boneless; it cannot hold itself together

I love to see two truths at the same time. Every comparison gives the mind this advantage.

Does talent have any need of passions? Yes, of many passions - repressed.

They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night

Be charitable and indulgent to everyone but thyself.

Children need models more than they need critics

Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man.

All that is good in man lies in youthful feeling and mature thought

The evening of a well-spent life brings its lamps with it.

The man of imagination who is untrained (unlearned, uneducated, undisciplined) has wings and no feet.

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

Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.

Without duty, life is soft and boneless.

To be capable of respect is almost as rare as to be worthy of it.

Ask the young. They know everything.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

Politeness is the flower of humanity.

Everything that is exact is short.

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

How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!

Let your cry be for free souls rather than for freedom. Moral liberty is the only important liberty.

Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.

He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.

What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.

To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.

Fear loves the idea of danger.

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

When you give, give with joy and smiling.

The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one's soul.

Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.

I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men—as base money—the words by which they cheat and are cheated!

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

It is always our inabilities that vex us.

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.