Joseph Joubert

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.