1754-1824, French Moralist
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Joseph Joubert – [Kindness]
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
Joseph Joubert – [Ambition]
Ask the young. They know everything.
Joseph Joubert – [Youth]
Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.
Joseph Joubert – [Charity]
Chance generally favors the prudent.
Joseph Joubert – [Fate]
Children need models rather than critics.
Joseph Joubert – [Children]
Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.
Joseph Joubert – [Painters and Painting]
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Joseph Joubert – [Labor]
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.
Joseph Joubert – [Grace]
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
Joseph Joubert – [Friends and Friendship]
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.
Joseph Joubert – [Mystery]
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Joseph Joubert – [Imagination]
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle it without debate.
Joseph Joubert – [Argument]
Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
Joseph Joubert – [Kindness]
Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.
Joseph Joubert – [Logic]
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
Joseph Joubert – [Monuments]
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
Joseph Joubert – [Writers and Writing]
One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
Joseph Joubert – [Imagination]
Ornaments were invented by modesty.
Joseph Joubert – [Modesty]
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
Joseph Joubert – [Ideals and Idealism]