Top 250 Joseph Joubert Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.”

— Joseph Joubert

202. “Our worries always come from our weaknesses.”

— Joseph Joubert

203. “Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty.”

— Joseph Joubert

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204. “Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that, it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.”

— Joseph Joubert

205. “One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet. Joseph Joubert may 16 2002.”

— Joseph Joubert

206. “Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience...”

— Joseph Joubert

207. “Politeness smooths wrinkles.”

— Joseph Joubert

208. “If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.”

— Joseph Joubert

209. “Think of the ills from which you are exempt.”

— Joseph Joubert

210. “Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.”

— Joseph Joubert

211. “Thoughts there are, that need no embodying, no form, no expression. It is enough to hint at them vaguely; a word, and they are heard and seen.”

— Joseph Joubert

212. “The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.”

— Joseph Joubert

213. “The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.”

— Joseph Joubert

214. “Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.”

— Joseph Joubert

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215. “It is easier to be mistaken about the true than the beautiful.”

— Joseph Joubert

216. “There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.”

— Joseph Joubert

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217. “Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.”

— Joseph Joubert

218. “No one is mediocre who has good sense and good sentiments.”

— Joseph Joubert

219. “There is graciousness and a kind of urbanity in beginning with men by esteem and confidence. It proves, at least, that we have long lived in good company with others and with our selves.”

— Joseph Joubert

220. “Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms.”

— Joseph Joubert

221. “Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that’s a good thing born from a bad thing.”

— Joseph Joubert

222. “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

223. “Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.”

— Joseph Joubert

224. “Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.”

— Joseph Joubert

225. “Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.”

— Joseph Joubert

226. “Everything has its poetry. 94.”

— Joseph Joubert

227. “The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.”

— Joseph Joubert

228. “Power makes you attractive; it even makes women love old men.”

— Joseph Joubert

229. “Ornaments were invented by modesty.”

— Joseph Joubert

230. “Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.”

— Joseph Joubert

231. “Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective.”

— Joseph Joubert

232. “We should make ourselves loved, for men are only just towards those whom they love.”

— Joseph Joubert

233. “In order to be happy, think of the ills you have been spared.”

— Joseph Joubert

234. “The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine – but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.”

— Joseph Joubert

235. “Avoid singularity. There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them.”

— Joseph Joubert

236. “The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.”

— Joseph Joubert

237. “In really good acting we should be able to believe that what we hear and see is of our own imagining; it should seem to be to us as a charming dream.”

— Joseph Joubert

238. “National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.”

— Joseph Joubert

239. “Without duty, life is soft and boneless.”

— Joseph Joubert

240. “There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.”

— Joseph Joubert

241. “Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.”

— Joseph Joubert

242. “Speech is but the incorporation of thought.”

— Joseph Joubert

243. “To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.”

— Joseph Joubert

244. “In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.”

— Joseph Joubert

245. “Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.”

— Joseph Joubert

246. “Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.”

— Joseph Joubert

247. “Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?”

— Joseph Joubert

248. “The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.”

— Joseph Joubert

249. “Luckily, I never feel at one time more than half my pains.”

— Joseph Joubert

250. “Figure, movement. Everything happens, says Pascal, from figure and movement. To say in this case that everything happens from movement, for every figure is no more than the lingering trace of a movement that has already ceased. Thus the letters that I am forming now, for example, are only the pen’s lingering trace of the movement of my hand.”

— Joseph Joubert