Joseph Joubert

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Figure, movement. Everything happens, says Pascal, from figure and movement. To say in this case that everything happens from movement, for every figure is no more than the lingering trace of a movement that has already ceased. Thus the letters that I am forming now, for example, are only the pen's lingering trace of the movement of my hand.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.

Children need models rather than critics.

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.

It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.

There are those to whom one must advise madness.

It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features.

Those for whom the world is not enough: saints, conquerors, poets, and all lovers of books.