Joseph Joubert

"Half myself mocks the other half."

"When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do."

"It is above all the language for expressing these truths that have not yet been found."

"Think nothing outside their paper."

"I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity."

"In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition."

"It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost."

"To see the world is to judge the judges."

"When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it."

"Words, like glass, darken whatever they do not help us to see."

"In selecting from the “Thoughts” I have sought those that are the largest and deepest, that are the least one-sided or partial, those that combine originality with beauty, brevity with weight, freshness with truth ; and thence I have passed over most of those that were written under dogmatic influences, and which, therefore, seem to me partial or one-sided. At the same time, to any who shall find themselves profited by what is here given them in English, may be cordially recommended the original volume, of which scarcely the half is here translated."

"Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it."