"Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision"
About this Quote
Words are meant to be windows, not walls. When they do not help us see, they fog the very things they name, turning thought into glare and shadow. Joseph Joubert, the French moralist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, had a lifelong devotion to brevity and precision. Writing amid the turbulence of the Revolution and its aftermath, he watched public language swell with thunderous rhetoric and felt how easily eloquence can blind. His notebooks, published posthumously, distill a classic ideal of clarity inherited from Pascal and Montaigne: language should be the servant of perception, not its master.
The image of glass is exact. A well-made, clean pane disappears; we notice what lies beyond it. When smudged, tinted, or thick with ornament, it draws attention to itself and distorts the scene. So with words. Jargon that excludes rather than enlightens, abstractions that float free of reality, euphemisms that anesthetize moral judgment, and ornate style that dazzles for its own sake all turn language into an obstacle. The point is not austerity for its own sake, but fidelity to seeing. Good prose is a polished surface through which understanding passes.
There is an ethics implied here. To write or speak is to take responsibility for the vision one offers others. In law or science, clarity safeguards fairness; in politics, it resists manipulation; in daily life, it honors the person addressed. Silence, too, has a place in this ethic. If words cannot help someone see, restraint can be the most truthful choice. Later thinkers echo the warning, from the plain style urged by Orwell to philosophers who insist that what can be said should be said clearly. Joubert compresses all of that into a single image: choose language that reveals. Polish the glass. If it will not aid vision, do not put it between the mind and the world.
The image of glass is exact. A well-made, clean pane disappears; we notice what lies beyond it. When smudged, tinted, or thick with ornament, it draws attention to itself and distorts the scene. So with words. Jargon that excludes rather than enlightens, abstractions that float free of reality, euphemisms that anesthetize moral judgment, and ornate style that dazzles for its own sake all turn language into an obstacle. The point is not austerity for its own sake, but fidelity to seeing. Good prose is a polished surface through which understanding passes.
There is an ethics implied here. To write or speak is to take responsibility for the vision one offers others. In law or science, clarity safeguards fairness; in politics, it resists manipulation; in daily life, it honors the person addressed. Silence, too, has a place in this ethic. If words cannot help someone see, restraint can be the most truthful choice. Later thinkers echo the warning, from the plain style urged by Orwell to philosophers who insist that what can be said should be said clearly. Joubert compresses all of that into a single image: choose language that reveals. Polish the glass. If it will not aid vision, do not put it between the mind and the world.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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