Joseph Joubert

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.

One must die lovable (if one can).

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.

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.