Joseph Joubert

Glory. Lovelier to desire than to possess.

The imagination is an eye where images remain forever.

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.

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.