Joseph Joubert

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.