"We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness."

Joseph Joubert Literature See all quotes by Joseph Joubert →

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“All these philosophers are no more than surgeons.”

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

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

“Stars more beautiful to the eyes than the telescope that robs them of their illusions.”

“The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them forever.”

“Of what must be said and what must not be said. The importance of knowing.”

Resonant Thoughts

"It was one of history’s great love stories, the mutually profitable romance which Hollywood and bohunk America conducted almost in the dark, a tapping of fervent messages through the wall of the San G…"

— John Updike

Literature1932–2009

#love

"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love."

— Graham Greene

Literature1904–1991

#love

"And where may hide what came and loved our clay? as the Poet asked finely."

— A. S. Byatt

Literature1936–2023

#love

"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn’t wait to leave."

— Anatole Broyard

Literature1920–1990

#love