Joseph Roux

French Catholic priest and Occitan poet

Abbé Joseph Roux (19 April 1834 – February 1905) was a French Catholic parish priest, poet, and philologist.

Quotes

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Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

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Pensées, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1886 (view online)
  • Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.
    • Part 1, LXXI
  • A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
    • Part 1, LXXIV
  • Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.
    • Part 4, XXVIII (1886)
  • The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.
    • Part 4, LXXXV
  • It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.
    • Part 4, LXXXVIII
  • 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.
    • Part 4, XCIX
  • Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.
    • Part 5, XXII
  • The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.
    • Part 5, XXXVII
  • 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.
    • Part 9, LIV
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