Joseph Joubert
Other authors publishing under this name are:
Joseph Joubert, prêtre catholique et un organiste
Joseph Joubert was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées published posthumously.
From the age of 14 Joubert attended a religious college in Toulouse, where he later taught until 1776. In 1778 he went to Paris where he met D'Alembert and Diderot, amongst others, and later became friends with young writer and diplomat Chateaubriand.
He alternated between living in Paris with his friends and life in the privacy of the countryside in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He was appointed inspector-general of the University under Napoleon.
Joubert published nothing during his lifetime, but he wrote a copious amount of letters and filled sheets of paper and small notebooks with thoughts about the nature of human existence, literature and other topics, in a poignant, often aphoristic style. After his death his widow entrusted Chateaubriand with these notes, and in 1838, he published a selection titled Recueil des pensées de M. Joubert (Collected Thoughts of Mr. Joubert). More complete editions were to follow, also of Joubert's correspondence.
Somewhat of the Epicurean school of philosophy, Joubert enjoyed even his own suffering as he believed sickness gave subtlety to the soul.
Joubert's works have been translated into numerous languages, into English by Paul Auster, amongst others.
“Close your eyes and see.”
“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.”
“There are those to whom one must advise madness.”
“You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.”
“لا أحب الكتب الجديدة .. أنها تمنعني من قراءة الكتب القديمة”
“Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.”
“The paper is patient, but the reader is not.”
“The breath of the mind is attention 128”
“Everything has its poetry. 94”
“It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102”
“Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.”
“The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.”
“We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.”
“Never cut what you can untie”
“To teach is to learn twice.”
“Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.”
“God is the place where I do not remember the rest.”
“When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees.”
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
“Misery is almost always the result of thinking.”
“Children always want to look behind mirrors.”
“He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.”
“Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.”
“Imagination is the eye of the soul”
“Children need models rather than critics.”
“We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their own”
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.”
“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”