Joseph Joubert on Religion

"In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure."

"Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air."

"Where do ideas go? They go into the memory of God."

"Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse."

"Conversation. — Because they have many of those ideas that, to be shown, have need of eyes, gestures, voice, a whole multitude of signs that the written word does not accompany. One sees the soul in operation."

"One always adds a little of one's soul to what one thinks."

"God has commanded time to console the afflicted."

"It seems there is something spiritual in wine."

"During our youth, there is something in us that is better than ourselves, I mean better than our desires, our pleasures, our yieldings, and our inclinations. Our soul is good then, even though our intelligence and will are not."

"The imagination is the eye of the soul."

"The soul speaks to itself in parables."

"Never the mind without the soul."

"All religions = all women."

"The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it."