Philibert Joseph Roux Quotes

Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.

The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.

Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.

We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

To love is to choose.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.

The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the morning and the dew of the evening; ros matutinum, ros serotinum! Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears! when young, he will bear flowers; when old, fruit!

Friends are rare for, the good reason that men are not common.

God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.

The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.

The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.

Success causes us to be more praised than known.

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.

That which we know is but little; that which we have a presentiment of is immense; it is in this direction that the poet outruns the learned man.

We love justice greatly, and just men but little.

What is slander? A verdict of "guilty" pronounced in the absence of the accused, with closed doors, without defence or appeal, by an interested and prejudiced judge.

Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex.

The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.

The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment.

We often experience more regret over the part we have left, than pleasure over the part we have preferred.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

When unhappy, one doubts everything when happy one doubts nothing.

Generosity is more charitable than wealth.

Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse.

What is love? two souls and one flesh; friendship? two bodies and one soul.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them.

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.

At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.

Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.

Everything that is exquisite hides itself.

It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.

As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.

The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.

Great souls are harmonious.

The habit of prayer communicates a penetrating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the smile, the tears,--to all one says, or does, or writes.

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

Not all of those to whom we do good love us, neither do all those to whom we do evil hate us.

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.