“The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.”

— Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, 1883

About Joseph Joubert

1754 – 1824

French moralist and essayist, author of the "Pensées".

“Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.”

“We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven.”

“Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement.”

“The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day.”

“Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.”

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

“It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author—and not to learn it better.”