Top 250 Joseph Joubert Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “Fear loves the idea of danger.”

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

205. “The paper is patient, but the reader is not.”

— Joseph Joubert

206. “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

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

— Joseph Joubert

208. “Politeness smooths wrinkles.”

— Joseph Joubert

209. “Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.”

— Joseph Joubert

210. “To the liberal ideas of the age must be opposed the moral ideas of all ages.”

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

213. “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

214. “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

215. “When we love, it is the heart that judges.”

— Joseph Joubert

216. “Es preciso que exista algo sagrado.”

— Joseph Joubert

217. “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

218. “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

219. “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

220. “Everything has its poetry. 94.”

— Joseph Joubert

221. “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

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

228. “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

229. “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

230. “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

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

238. “Ornaments were invented by modesty.”

— Joseph Joubert

239. “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

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

242. “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

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

245. “We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.”

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

247. “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

248. “Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.”

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Joseph Joubert