Joseph Joubert

"Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse."

"We are worth more when someone looks at us. And, because of this, an eye is always watching us."

"It is impossible for me to say something foolish without being aware of it."

"Solitude gives an I. I that gives solitude. It is in our thoughts, and the one the world gives, in our feelings. Because solitude grows accustomed to seeing, to contemplating; and the world, to acting for itself."

"Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored."

"Pride swells the brain. Vanity carries with it smoke, minds. Hatred tightens the heart. Love warms the lungs. Admiration stops the heart. We breathe through desire. We want to pump up all that delights, and dilates. Sadness is inaction. The love that comes from the blood, the love that comes from the soul."

"To speak with his imagination, but to think with his reason."

"The things we know when not thinking of them."

"Where do ideas go? They go into the memory of God."

"Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it."

"Thoughts that cannot survive the open air and that evaporate as soon as we take them out of the room. To put them to the test of isolation. Take them out of the book where you found them, they do not endure."

"To know: it is to see inside oneself."

"Perhaps (and probably) it would be true to say that we cannot conceive of anything except what we can see in our minds."

"It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice."

"Close your eyes and you will see."

"Objects must be described only in order to describe the feelings they envoke in us."

"I have not seen you since, but you have often appeared to me in my dreams."

"The imagination is an eye where images remain forever."

"A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball."

"To seek the truth. But, as you are seeking and as you are waiting, what will you do, what will you think, what will you practice, what rules will you follow?"

"Do not choose for your wife any woman you would not choose for a friend if she were a man."

"We are all old children, more or less serious, more or less filled with ourselves."

"What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them?"

"Dream. Lost memory."

"Speak more softly to be better heard by a deaf public."

"If I weigh myself down, everything is lost."

"To descend into ourselves, we must first lift ourselves up."

"There are many situations in life that we suddenly feel we have seen in dreams."

"All beautiful words are susceptible to more than one meaning (or signification)."

"The phrase, "One dies before one has lived.""

"The truth by way of illusion."

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

"The child speaks words with his memory long before he speaks them with his tongue."

"Because they know all the words, they think they know all the truths."

"Misery is almost always the result of thinking."

"Someone said of an asthmatic who was being very sweet and patient in his suffering: "One would like to breathe for him.""

"The voice is an aid to intelligence."

"They speak to the ear. I want to speak to the memory."

"Everything that is exact is short."

""But he doesn't finish his sentences," (he said). And they don't finish their thoughts. — To finish their thoughts. — To finish one's thought! It is a long process, it is rare. It gives intense pleasure. Because every finished thought easily enters the mind. They don't have the same need to be beautiful in order to please. It is enough for them to be finished. The situation of the soul that has had such thoughts communicates itself to other souls and transfers its repose to them."

"These thoughts form not only the foundation of my work, but of my life."

"It's not mental repose they seek, but mental laziness."

"Enter oneself (we say). When one enters oneself, one sees God."

"They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser."

"The time I once lost in pleasure I now lose in suffering."

"When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do."

"There is nothing serious in civil life except good and evil, vice and virtue. Everything else in it should be a game."

"It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas."

"In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations."

"Illusions comes from heaven and mistakes come from us."