Philibert joseph roux quotes

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.

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

Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.

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

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

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

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

Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

We are more conscious that a person is in the wrong when the wrong concerns ourselves.

Everything that is exquisite hides itself.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

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.

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

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the desire experienced for its torments.

Let us pray! God is just, he tries us; God is pitiful, he will comfort us; let us pray!

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

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

Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

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

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

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

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

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

Great souls are harmonious.

To love is to choose.

Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.

It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.

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

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

The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.

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

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

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.

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

In youth one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears

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

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

The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.

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

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.

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

The egoist does not tolerate egoism.

Success causes us to be more praised than known.

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

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

Generosity is more charitable than wealth.

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.

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.

We love justice greatly, and just men but little.

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

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!

Length of saying makes languor of hearing.

A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.

No labor is hopeless.

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

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

Certain names always awake certain prejudices.

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

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

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

Persons of delicate taste endure stupid criticism better than they do stupid praise.

That which deceives us and does us harm, also undeceives us and does us good.

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

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.

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

Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.

History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.

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