Top 250 Joseph Joubert Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To teach is to learn twice.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Education Quotes, Short Quotes, Short Inspiring Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Teacher Appreciation Quotes

2. “The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Victory Quotes, Intelligence Quotes

3. “A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Kindness Quotes

4. “Politeness is the flower of humanity.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Flower Quotes

5. “Work like you don’t need the money.”

— Joseph Joubert

6. “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”

— Joseph Joubert

7. “Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.”

— Joseph Joubert

8. “Close your eyes and you will see.”

— Joseph Joubert

9. “Imagination is the eye of the soul.”

— Joseph Joubert

10. “Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.”

— Joseph Joubert

11. “Children need models rather than critics.”

— Joseph Joubert

12. “Never cut what you can untie.”

— Joseph Joubert

13. “All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.”

— Joseph Joubert

14. “When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.”

— Joseph Joubert

15. “The evening of a well spent youth brings it’s lamps with it.”

— Joseph Joubert

16. “The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.”

— Joseph Joubert

17. “Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.”

— Joseph Joubert

18. “You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.”

— Joseph Joubert

19. “We measure minds by their stature; it would be better to esteem them by their beauty.”

— Joseph Joubert

20. “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Reading Quotes

21. “You want to talk to someone; first open your ears.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

22. “Ask the young. They know everything.”

— Joseph Joubert

23. “Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes.”

— Joseph Joubert

24. “He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.”

— Joseph Joubert

25. “In temperance there is ever cleanliness and elegance.”

— Joseph Joubert

26. “Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.”

— Joseph Joubert

27. “A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.”

— Joseph Joubert

28. “Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.”

— Joseph Joubert

29. “Those readiest to criticise are often least able to appreciate.”

— Joseph Joubert

30. “What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.”

— Joseph Joubert

31. “You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.”

— Joseph Joubert

32. “The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.”

— Joseph Joubert

Featured in: Hiking Quotes

33. “Space is to place as eternity is to time.”

— Joseph Joubert

35. “Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.”

— Joseph Joubert

36. “Education should be gentle and stern, not cold and lax.”

— Joseph Joubert

37. “Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.”

— Joseph Joubert

38. “A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.”

— Joseph Joubert

39. “Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.”

— Joseph Joubert

40. “When you give, give with joy and smiling.”

— Joseph Joubert

41. “Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench.”

— Joseph Joubert

42. “Tenderness is the rest of passion.”

— Joseph Joubert

43. “If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life’s evils, nor slight her blessings.”

— Joseph Joubert

44. “The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry.”

— Joseph Joubert

45. “We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.”

— Joseph Joubert

46. “There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment.”

— Joseph Joubert

47. “Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another...”

— Joseph Joubert

48. “The evening of life brings with it its lamps.”

— Joseph Joubert

49. “To teach is to learn twice. About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard. The purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place to spend one’s leisure.”

— Joseph Joubert

50. “Justice is the right of the weakest.”

— Joseph Joubert