Joseph Roux

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

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

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

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

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

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

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

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

Nothing vivifies and nothing kills like the emotions.

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

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

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

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

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

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

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

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

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.

Our experience is composed rather of illusions that of wisdom acquired.

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