C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Of Virtue and Morality
By Joseph Joubert (1754–1824)
Translation of Thomas Wentworth Higginson
E
VERYTHING may be learned—even virtue.
We should do everything to let good people have their own way.
Do not cut what you can untie.
To be always occupied with the duties of others, never with our own—alas!
There are those who have only fragments: they have not enough of the material to make a coat.
Without duty, life is soft and boneless; it can no longer sustain itself.
Not only is there no virtue where there is no rule and law, but there is not even pleasure. The plays of children themselves have laws, and would not exist without them; these laws are always a form of restraint, and nevertheless, the more strictly they are obeyed the greater is the amusement.
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