Joseph Joubert: Frases em inglês (página 9)

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

“Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored.”

“When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.”

“Democracy and slavery are inseparable. Why. Democracy as it existed among the ancients was no more than government by a number of men large enough to be called the people. But this designation is false. The true people, in such a state, the greatest number, the majority belong to the class of slaves, and slavery inevitably develops in a country governed this way, because it is impossible that those who spend their time making laws can make shoes and clothes, plant crops, work fields, etc.”

“Illusion or play. Everything agreeable is in them.”

“There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape.”

“In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent.”

“In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations.”

“When we find what we have been looking for, we don't have time to say it. We must die.”

“Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war.”

“Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.”

“Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words.”

“Anger, which purges resentment.”

“They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser.”

“Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?”

“Having found nothing worth more than emptiness, he leaves space vacant.”

“Thoughts that are light, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts. Words that often retain their meaning even when they are detached from others and that please when isolated as sounds.”

“A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.”

“A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.”