Joseph de Maistre Quotations

There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

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 risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.

All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

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 complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.

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 all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.

In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.

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, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things, but each according to its nature, and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.

It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them.

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, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.

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 are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.

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 incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

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 work.

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 spring is transformed into a dance, force becomes dynamic, and outlines figures.

What a miserable world!--trouble if we love, and trouble if we do not love.

In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.

Women have a genius for love; men can only learn the art indifferently.

Every time that a man who is not an absolute fool presents you with a question he considers very problematic after giving it careful thought, distrust those quick answers that come to the mind of someone who has considered it only briefly or not at all. These answers are usually simplistic views lacking in consistency, which explain nothing, or which do not bear examination.

Genius does not seem to derive any great support from syllogisms. Its carriage is free; its manner has a touch of inspiration. We see it come, but we never see it walk.

Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.

Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.

Christianity was preached by ignorant men and believed by servants, and that is why it resembles nothing ever known.

Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song.

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 is horrible.

Prejudice does not mean false ideas, but only ... opinions adopted before examination.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

The great fault in women is to desire to be like men.

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 attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.

In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.

Every country has the government it deserves.

To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success.