The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert

Joseph Joubert, trans. Paul Auster, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, New York: New York Review Books, 2005. 

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Maurice Blanchot, trans. Charlotte Mandell, “Joubert and Space,” The Book to Come:...He never wrote a book. He only prepared himself to write one, resolutely seeking the right conditions that would allow him to write. Then he forgot even this aim. More precisely, what he sought, this source of writing, this space in which to write, this light to define in space, demanded of him and asserted in him characteristics that made him unfit for any ordinary literary work, or made him turn away from it. He was thus one of the first entirely modern writers, preferring the center over the sphere, sacrificing results for the discovery of their conditions, not writing in order to add one book to another, but to make himself master of the point whence all books seemed to come, which, once found, would exempt him from writing them. 

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-- During the rain there is a certain darkness that stretches out all objects. Beyond that, its effect on our body forces us to withdraw into ourselves, and this inwardness makes our soul infinitely more sensitive. The very noise rain produces, which the Latins called densissimus imber, continuously occupies the ear, awakes attentiveness and keeps us on the alert. The brownish hue the moisture gives to the walk, the trees, the rocks, adds to the impression these objects make. And the solitude and silence it spreads out around the traveler, by forcing animals and men to be quiet and to seek shelter, makes these impressions more distinct. Enveloped in his coat, his head covered, and moving along deserted paths, the traveler is struck by everything, and everything is enlarged before his imagination or his eye. The streams are swollen, the grass is thicker, the stones are more sharply defined; the sky is closer to the earth, and all objects, closed up in this narrowed horizon, occupy a greater space and importance. (1783?)

-- If the earth must perish, then astronomy is our only consolation. (1784)

-- If curiosity had not made us examine the nature of plants, how they take root, how they grow, how they die, how they reproduce... we would enjoy their fruits no more fully than animals do, and perhaps with even less pleasure...

-- Thought forms in the soul in the same way clouds form in the air. (1786)

-- Illusion is in sensation. Error is in judgments. We can know truth and at the same time take pleasure in illusion. (1796)

-- Among the three extensions, we must include time, space, and silence. Space is in time, silence is in space. 

-- It is impossible to love the same person twice. 

-- Desire to be a bird, desire to be a bee. Man feels that his happiness is in the air. —And if we wish to become a bird, it is not an eagle, a vulture, a pheasant, a partridge, or a parrot that we wish to become, but a modest little bird gifted with amiability, a warble, a titmouse, a robin, a nightingale, an average and innocent bird. For neither do we wish to become a hummingbird. 

-- The style is the thought itself. (1798)

-- Young people...They give their minds much exercise but little food.

-- Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it. 

-- Blind people are cheerful because their minds are not distracted by the representations of things that can please them and because they have more ideas about spectacles than we do. 

-- If a blind man asked me: "What is light?" I would answer: "What makes us see."—"What is seeing?"—"It is to have an idea of what is before our eyes without having to think about it." (1800)

--  I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself. (1806)