Joseph Joubert

"Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them."

"They do not know how to apply names to things."

"Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles."

"The weakness of the dying slanders life."

"To compensate absence with memory."

"Democracy and slavery are inseparable. Why. Democracy as it existed among the ancients was no more than government by a number of men large enough to be called the people. But this designation is false. The true people, in such a state, the greatest number, the majority belong to the class of slaves, and slavery inevitably develops in a country governed this way, because it is impossible that those who spend their time making laws can make shoes and clothes, plant crops, work fields, etc."

"Here is the desert. In this silence, everything speaks to me: and in your noise, everything falls silent."

"Don't cut what you can untie."

"One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks."

"The people. They know how to know, but not how to choose."

"Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking."

"Divorce. Its existence and use should be determined only by the interests of the children."

"To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp."

"The mind can only create errors. Truths are not created, they exist; one can only see them, disentangle them, discover them, and expose them."

"The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye."

"What our eyes see, our imagination can no longer see. The same thing cannot be the object of both kinds of seeing."

"When men are imbeciles, the one who is mad dominates the others."

"Imprisoned in our bodies...and our soul has its windows."

"The number of books is infinite."

"He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing."

"To teach is to learn twice over."

"They cannot accustom themselves to lacking nothing."

"Eyes raised towards Heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be."

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

"To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it."

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

"When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world."

"Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?"

"It is not facts, but rumors that cause emotions among the people. What is believed creates everything."

"Anger makes us adroit."

"All these philosophers are no more than surgeons."

"Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air."

"Le génie commence les beaux ouvrages, mais le travail seul les achève."

"The imagination is the eye of the soul."

"All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste."

"The good is worth more than the best."

"Wisdom is the strength of the weak."

"God made life to be lived and not to be known."

"Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions."

"We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma."

"Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement."

"We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness."

"God has commanded time to console the afflicted."

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

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

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

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

"Ask the young. They know everything."

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

"The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it."