Joseph Joubert

Who was Joseph Joubert?

Joseph Joubert was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées, which was published posthumously.

From the age of fourteen Joubert attended a religious college in Toulouse, where he later taught until 1776. In 1778 he went to Paris where he met D'Alembert and Diderot, amongst others, and later became friends with a young writer and diplomat, Chateaubriand.

He alternated between living in Paris with his friends and life in the privacy of the countryside in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He was appointed inspector-general of universities under Napoleon.

Joubert published nothing during his lifetime, but he wrote a copious amount of letters and filled sheets of paper and small notebooks with thoughts about the nature of human existence, literature, and other topics, in a poignant, often aphoristic style. After his death his widow entrusted Chateaubriand with these notes, and in 1838, he published a selection entitled, Recueil des pensées de M. Joubert. More complete editions were to follow, as were collections of Joubert's correspondence.

Somewhat of the Epicurean school of philosophy, Joubert even valued his own frequent suffering of ill health, as he believed sickness gave subtlety to the soul.

Famous Quotes:

• Politeness is the flower of humanity.
• You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
• The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
• Ornaments were invented by modesty.
• Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.
• The mind's direction is more important than its progress.
• To teach is to learn twice.
• A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
• How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
• Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.