TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.
Joseph JoubertRead
The paper is patient, but the reader is not.
Interpretation
Writing requires patience from the author, but readers may not have the same patience.
This quote by Joseph Joubert suggests that while a piece of writing can be endlessly revised and adapted to improve it, the reader often approaches it with a limited amount of patience. This highlights the importance of engaging the reader quickly and effectively, as their time and attention are finite, in contrast to the vast potential for refinement that exists in the written word itself.
In practice
This quote can be used in a writing workshop to emphasize the need for concise and engaging writing.
TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.
A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.
We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.
Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.
Before using a fine word, make a place for it.
Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.
A conventional truth can be important - it's essential to learn elementary mathematics, for example - but it won't give you an edge. It's not a secret.
From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.
When I was born in 1942, World War II was still going. And I began to realize when I became a young adult that if we don't teach our kids a better way of relating to their fellow human beings, the very future of humanity on the planet is in jeopardy.
It is necessary to study these words you have written, for the words have a longer history than you have and say more than you know.
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