The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert

Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

You want to talk to someone: first open your ears.

Everyone makes and has need of making a world other than the one he sees.

Luminous words, like those drops of light we see in fireworks.

Of what must be said and what must not be said. The importance of knowing.

When a truth is better conceived through abstraction, use the abstraction; if not, don't.

Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war.

It is not light that burns, that purifies, that consumes, that divides, and that recomposes; it is fire. And this fire we are talking about always follows light.

Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.

You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?

Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.

It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost.

Nothing is better than a justified enthusiasm.

Madness is an illness of the brain, not of the mind.

You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth.

Let us look for our light in our feelings. There is a warmth in them that contains many clarities.

Retreat often into your sphere, rest yourself in your center, plunge yourself into your element: good advice, which must be remembered.

One must die lovable (if one can).

To write his views or his observations, his ideas, but not his judgments. Our judgments limit our views of things. Some enclosures, but no walls. The man who always write his judgments places before his eyes the calpe and abyla. He goes no further and creates a nec plus ultra. Thus, in the study of wisdom, many views and few judgments.

When we find what we have been looking for, we don't have time to say it. We must die.

A frightening thing, which is perhaps true: "old men want to survive."

In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent.

Reason does not reason. It goes straight to the fact or the consequence.

Half myself mocks the other half.

Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

To be pathetic when we cry, we must cry without wanting to and without knowing it.

And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.

In order to know men, something must be chanced. Who risks himself of nothing knows nothing.

There is nothing perfectly true for man; I mean in human opinions. Just like there is nothing perfectly round.

Everything we can measure seems small.

Speak for the ear and write for the memory.

A stupid lie is one that can never make itself believed.

Wicked people have nothing human about them except passions: they are almost their virtues.

A book that reveals the mind is worth more than one that only reveals its subject.

No, men are not born to know, but they are destined for it.

Never the mind without the soul.

Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words.

Whoever does not see his friends in a good light loves them little. To see in a good light. — Whoever does not see in a good light is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover. Whoever does not see in a good light has not been able to lift his mind up to what is there or his heart to what is good.

Let's go; and follow your mistake.

Anger, which purges resentment.

The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them forever.

Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent.

Tenderness is the repose of passion.

During our youth, there is something in us that is better than ourselves, I mean better than our desires, our pleasures, our yieldings, and our inclinations. Our soul is good then, even though our intelligence and will are not.

All religions = all women.

Abuse of words, foundation of ideology.

Without fixed ideas, no fixed feelings. (Whoever has no constant opinions has no constant emotions.)

I am like Montaigne: "unsuited to continuous discourse."

To let the reader complete the symmetry between words and do no more than suggest it.

People of intelligence often treat business in the way ignorant people treat books: they understand nothing.

Of those who want us to be wrong and those who want us to be right.

We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.

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

Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.

The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.

In this painting of our life given to us by our memories, everything is moving and depends on our point of view.

In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.

Sloth waiting for inspiration.

Reason leads man back to his instincts.

Little people have few passions, they hardly have anything but needs.

He must not cultivate his friends, but cultivate his friendships within himself. They must be kept, cared for, watered.

What is clear should not be drawn out too much. These useless explanations, these endless examinations are a kind of long whiteness and lead to boredom. It is the uniformity of a wall, of a long piece of laundry.

Maxims, because what is isolated can be seen better.

The breath of the mind is attention.

The talkative person is one who speaks more than he thinks. Someone who thinks a great deal and talks a great deal is never considered a talkative person. The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.

There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape.

The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.

There is an infinity of things one does well only through necessity.

When the last word is always the one that offers itself first, the work becomes difficult.

Animals love the people who talk to them.

The truth! Only God sees it.

Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, this thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so they are capable, finally, or maintaining a natural flexibility. All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.

Let anger pass, make a place for it; do not impede its progress; do not disturb its development, give it the time it needs to die out, open a wide path for it.

Properly speaking, man inhabits only his head and his heart. All other places are vainly before his eyes, at his sides, and under his feet: he himself is not there at all.

Whoever consults the light within himself (it is within everyone) excels at judging the object this light illumines.

Having found nothing worth more than emptiness, he leaves space vacant.

When I had the strength, I did not have the patience. I have the patience today and I no longer have the power.

Undoubtedly, philosophy caused the Revolution. But what caused philosophy? Theological arrogance.

We are afraid of having and showing a small mind and we are not afraid of having and showing a small heart.

Think nothing outside their paper.

For in spite of ourselves we respect those whom we see respected.

All those whom for style is not a game but a labor.

One always adds a little of one's soul to what one thinks.

It is above all the language for expressing these truths that have not yet been found.

Those who have judgment use it as much as in judging stones as in judging men.

From the center we should perceive the circle.

In living, one learns how to read. (How, and with what result.)

Available. A thought is perfect only when it is perfectly available, that is to say when one can place it and detach it at will.

Tacitus. And all those words that are obscure only once.

All ways of expressing ourselves are good if they make us understood. Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good.

To descend into ourselves, we must first lift ourselves up.

What you call weakness comes from the strength of friendship.

Illusions comes from heaven and mistakes come from us.

To see the world means judging the judges.

One must be an illusionary rather than a visionary.

It is not simply a matter of distinguishing between good and evil, but also of not confusing what is laughable with what is not. To make laughable what is not is in some way to make bad what was good.

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

What is promised to you in dreams is given to you in dreams!

Man loves what is small; and he loves what is big, through the same weakness.

A person who is never duped cannot be a friend.

All clear and transparent words appear to be beautiful sounds. Yes and no are not precisely clear words, but definite words. In clear words, there is more light than movement or attitude.

What we say is similar to what we are.

I did not have good eyes nor light in my mind that day.

The important business of man is life, and the important business of life is death.

I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.

Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.

In these times when, to express ourselves, we must speak in a way others do not.

One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. One must know how to leave one's own ideas and how to come back to them.

Beyond the brain, there is something that observes the brain itself.

One ruins the mind with too much writing. — One rusts it by not writing at all.

There must be several voices together in one voice for it to be beautiful. And several meanings in one word for it to be beautiful.

It seems there is something spiritual in wine.

What man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.

In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure.

Beauty is something animal, the beautiful is something celestial.

I stop when I see no more light; it is impossible for me to write by feeling my way.

Conversation. — Because they have many of those ideas that, to be shown, have need of eyes, gestures, voice, a whole multitude of signs that the written word does not accompany. One sees the soul in operation.

I have too much brain for my head. It cannot play comfortably in its box.

...burdened with the unbearable weight of ourselves.

When we speak, we write what we are saying in the air.

An oratorical style often has the same drawbacks as those operas in which the music prevents you from hearing the words. Here the words prevent you from seeing the thoughts.

When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do.

My ideas! It is the house for lodging them that costs me so much to build.

Someone said of an asthmatic who was being very sweet and patient in his suffering: "One would like to breathe for him."

Fear feeds the imagination.

We are all old children, more or less serious, more or less filled with ourselves.

They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser.

In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations.

Those thoughts that come to us suddenly and that are not yet ours.

All things that are easy to say have already been perfectly said.

All beautiful words are susceptible to more than one meaning (or signification).

Speak more softly to be better heard by a deaf public.

I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing.

Do not choose for your wife any woman you would not choose for a friend if she were a man.

What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them?

The child speaks words with his memory long before he speaks them with his tongue.

The truth by way of illusion.

My dreams are more amorous than my actions have ever been.

It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas.

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

There is nothing serious in civil life except good and evil, vice and virtue. Everything else in it should be a game.

They speak to the ear. I want to speak to the memory.

The time I once lost in pleasure I now lose in suffering.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

The voice is an aid to intelligence.

These thoughts form not only the foundation of my work, but of my life.

We must try, as much as possible, not to mistrust anyone.

Once we have tasted the juice of words, our mind can no longer pass them by. We drink thought from them.

The soul speaks to itself in parables.

Because they know all the words, they think they know all the truths.

All reflection is art.

Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.

It's not mental repose they seek, but mental laziness.

The phrase, "One dies before one has lived."

There are many situations in life that we suddenly feel we have seen in dreams.

Everything that is exact is short.

All these young minds the revolution has heated up and brought to flower before their time, before their age.

"But he doesn't finish his sentences," (he said). And they don't finish their thoughts. — To finish their thoughts. — To finish one's thought! It is a long process, it is rare. It gives intense pleasure. Because every finished thought easily enters the mind. They don't have the same need to be beautiful in order to please. It is enough for them to be finished. The situation of the soul that has had such thoughts communicates itself to other souls and transfers its repose to them.

Like those dreams that have pleased us. They escape us and we vainly try to hold onto them.

Thoughts that are light, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts. Words that often retain their meaning even when they are detached from others and that please when isolated as sounds.

One can advance a long time in life without aging.

Enter oneself (we say). When one enters oneself, one sees God.

This poetic nudity within words.

Let us look to beautiful poetry for the material of a beautiful prose.

To judge things of taste, we must give ourselves time to taste them.

Does talent have any need of passions? Yes, of many passions — repressed.

Glory. Lovelier to desire than to possess.

For simple light is perhaps still more beautiful than colors.

If I weigh myself down, everything is lost.

The imagination is an eye where images remain forever.

They do not know how to apply names to things.

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; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it.

To know: it is to see inside oneself.

The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye.

To think what we do not feel is to lie to ourselves, in the same way that we lie to others when we say to others what we do not think. Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body, and soul.

It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice.

Perhaps (and probably) it would be true to say that we cannot conceive of anything except what we can see in our minds.

Adventurous minds, which wait for and receive their ideas only from chance.

To seek the truth. But, as you are seeking and as you are waiting, what will you do, what will you think, what will you practice, what rules will you follow?

Memory. — It is a mirror, that retains, and retains forever. Nothing is lost in it, nothing is erased. But it can be tarnished. And then one sees nothing in it.

What our eyes see, our imagination can no longer see. The same thing cannot be the object of both kinds of seeing.

God made life to be lived and not to be known.

When men are imbeciles, the one who is mad dominates the others.

To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears.

Anger makes us adroit.

Where do ideas go? They go into the memory of God.

It is impossible to love the same person twice.

Democracy and slavery are inseparable. Why. Democracy as it existed among the ancients was no more than government by a number of men large enough to be called the people. But this designation is false. The true people, in such a state, the greatest number, the majority belong to the class of slaves, and slavery inevitably develops in a country governed this way, because it is impossible that those who spend their time making laws can make shoes and clothes, plant crops, work fields, etc.

We are worth more when someone looks at us. And, because of this, an eye is always watching us.

The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error.

It is impossible for me to say something foolish without being aware of it.

What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.

To compensate absence with memory.

A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.

To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp.

Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse.

Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored.

Pride swells the brain. Vanity carries with it smoke, minds. Hatred tightens the heart. Love warms the lungs. Admiration stops the heart. We breathe through desire. We want to pump up all that delights, and dilates. Sadness is inaction. The love that comes from the blood, the love that comes from the soul.

Thoughts that cannot survive the open air and that evaporate as soon as we take them out of the room. To put them to the test of isolation. Take them out of the book where you found them, they do not endure.

The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.

Stars more beautiful to the eyes than the telescope that robs them of their illusions.

My soul lives in a place where the passions have passed by and where I have known them all.

Objects must be described only in order to describe the feelings they envoke in us.

The mind can only create errors. Truths are not created, they exist; one can only see them, disentangle them, discover them, and expose them.

Illusion or play. Everything agreeable is in them.

Don't cut what you can untie.

The things we know when not thinking of them.

Let us remember that everything is double.

Close your eyes and you will see.

All these philosophers are no more than surgeons.

The weakness of the dying slanders life.

To speak with his imagination, but to think with his reason.

I have not seen you since, but you have often appeared to me in my dreams.

Solitude gives an I. I that gives solitude. It is in our thoughts, and the one the world gives, in our feelings. Because solitude grows accustomed to seeing, to contemplating; and the world, to acting for itself.

Imprisoned in our bodies...and our soul has its windows.

To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions.

When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world.

Ask the young. They know everything.

It is not facts, but rumors that cause emotions among the people. What is believed creates everything.

It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.

The people. They know how to know, but not how to choose.

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

Eyes raised towards Heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.

Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement.

Divorce. Its existence and use should be determined only by the interests of the children.

Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?

God has commanded time to console the afflicted.

All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.

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

The good is worth more than the best.

To teach is to learn twice over.

They cannot accustom themselves to lacking nothing.

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

He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing.

I love to see two truths at the same time. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage.

Here is the desert. In this silence, everything speaks to me: and in your noise, everything falls silent.

Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air.

Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.

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

The imagination is the eye of the soul.

One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

Wisdom is the strength of the weak.

The number of books is infinite.

We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it.