Joseph de Maistre Quotes

32 quotes in 523 categories

• The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint,…
• Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
• War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which…
• Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to…
• Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.
• All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.
• Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People…
• We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense…
• Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels,…
• I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it…
• Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.
• Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song.
• It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.
• All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this…
• Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to…
• There is no easy method of learning difficult things. The method is to close the door, give out that you are not at home, and…
• The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man. Thanks to number, the cry becomes a song, noise acquires rhythm, the…
• The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.
• The great fault in women is to desire to be like men.
• Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.

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