Top 250 Joseph Joubert Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “In clothes clean and fresh there is a kind of youth with which age should surround itself.”

— Joseph Joubert

52. “Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.”

— Joseph Joubert

53. “Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.”

— Joseph Joubert

54. “The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth, – that is the secret of the fine arts.”

— Joseph Joubert

55. “All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.”

— Joseph Joubert

56. “The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.”

— Joseph Joubert

57. “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

58. “It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.”

— Joseph Joubert

59. “Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.”

— Joseph Joubert

60. “We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him.”

— Joseph Joubert

61. “Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.”

— Joseph Joubert

62. “The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.”

— Joseph Joubert

63. “Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.”

— Joseph Joubert

64. “Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.”

— Joseph Joubert

65. “Virtue by calculation is the virtue of vice.”

— Joseph Joubert

66. “All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.”

— Joseph Joubert

67. “The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power.”

— Joseph Joubert

68. “To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.”

— Joseph Joubert

69. “The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.”

— Joseph Joubert

70. “The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting.”

— Joseph Joubert

71. “I resemble the poplar, – that tree which, even when old, still looks young.”

— Joseph Joubert

72. “He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.”

— Joseph Joubert

73. “Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.”

— Joseph Joubert

74. “If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.”

— Joseph Joubert

75. “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.”

— Joseph Joubert

76. “Fate and necessity are unconquerable.”

— Joseph Joubert

77. “The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them always.”

— Joseph Joubert

78. “God has commanded Time to console the unhappy.”

— Joseph Joubert

79. “Antiquity! I like its ruins better than its reconstructions.”

— Joseph Joubert

80. “What can you possibly add to a mind that’s full, especially one that’s full of itself.”

— Joseph Joubert

81. “Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.”

— Joseph Joubert

82. “When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.”

— Joseph Joubert

83. “Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.”

— Joseph Joubert

84. “Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.”

— Joseph Joubert

85. “In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.”

— Joseph Joubert

86. “Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.”

— Joseph Joubert

87. “Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.”

— Joseph Joubert

88. “Minds which never rest are subject to many digressions.”

— Joseph Joubert

89. “Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.”

— Joseph Joubert

90. “One can with dignity be wife and widow but once.”

— Joseph Joubert

91. “The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.”

— Joseph Joubert

92. “Heaven is for those who think of it.”

— Joseph Joubert

93. “We should do good whenever we can and do kindness at all times, for at all times we can.”

— Joseph Joubert

94. “Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.”

— Joseph Joubert

95. “Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.”

— Joseph Joubert

96. “Success serves men as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater when not measured by reflection.”

— Joseph Joubert

97. “What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.”

— Joseph Joubert

98. “All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.”

— Joseph Joubert

99. “Whence? wither? why? how? – these questions cover all philosophy.”

— Joseph Joubert

100. “Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.”

— Joseph Joubert