Joseph Joubert quotes - page 13

We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us. (Joseph Joubert)
We shall always keep a spare corner in our heads to give passing hospitality to our friends' opinion.
Joseph Joubert
Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.
Joseph Joubert
Words, like glasses, obscure everything which they do not make clear.
Joseph Joubert
Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.
Joseph Joubert
Time and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.
Joseph Joubert
A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Sound maxims are the germs of good strongly imprinted on the memory they fortify and strengthen the will.
Joseph Joubert
You arrive at truth through poetry I arrive at poetry through truth.
Joseph Joubert
To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.
Joseph Joubert
How many people eat, drink, and get married buy, sell, and build make contracts and attend to their fortune have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die but asleep.
Joseph Joubert
We may convince others by our arguments but we can only persuade them by their own. (Joseph Joubert)
Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.
Joseph Joubert
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.
Joseph Joubert
Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, this thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so they are capable, finally, or maintaining a natural flexibility. All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.
Joseph Joubert