Joseph Joubert Quotes

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

In today's society, looking good and feeling good often trumps doing good and being good. And some people don't know the difference anymore.

Good people are found, not changed.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

So many people say, "I'm a good person!" Like, why are you a good person? To be a good person you have to actively be good.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

We can be the best taught people on the face of the earth but the trouble is we don't live as well as we have been taught.

People are interested by talent. God is impressed by character

Be thou good thyself, and let people speak evil of thee; it is better than to be wicked, and that they should consider thee as good.

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.

A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might: Guid faith, he maunna fa' that.

But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.

Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.

Virtue may be cheerful without forgetting its dignity.

Fabulous is as fabulous does.

The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

Man is born with uprightness. If one loses it, he will be lucky if he escapes with his life.

Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin does not.

But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.

Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.

In thy face I see the map of honour, truth and loyalty.