Joseph Joubert

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.