Joseph Roux

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

Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

 * 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