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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cats definitely have their own opinions.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Fight your battles with words, not fists

I wonder how you say goodbye to someone forever?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 settling it than to settle it without debate.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Children need models more than they need critics

Be charitable and indulgent to everyone but thyself.

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

How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?

There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.

Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.

Genuine witticisms surprise those who say them as much as those who listen to them; they arise in us in spite of us, or, at least, without our participation,--like everything inspired.

Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that, it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.

In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.

Lenity is a part of justice; but she must not speak too loud for fear of waking justice.

The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.

Logic is to grammar what the sense of words is to their sound.

Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

Religion is fire which example keeps alive, and which goes out if not communicated.

Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?

Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.

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

One can with dignity be wife and widow but once.

The soul paints itself in our machines.

A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.

What can you possibly add to a mind that's full, especially one that's full of itself.

Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!

Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.

Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it... GET RICH QUICK! Count your blessings... Stop telling GOD how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your GOD is!!!!!! Contentment begins where comparison ends. The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.