Quotes from Joseph de Maistre

This world is a military expedition, an eternal combat. No doubt all chose who fought courageously in a battle are worthy of praise, but also there is no doubt that the greatest glory goes to the one who returns wounded.

It is frightening to see distinguished intellectuals fall under Robespierre's ax. From a humane standpoint they can never be too much mourned, but divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.

The most powerful sovereign has only two arms; his power depends on the instruments he uses and what he is given by public opinion.

contredisez sans cesse cet esprit de nouveauté et de changement, jusque dans les petites choses; laissez pendre sur vos murs les tapisseries enfumées de vos aïeux; chargez vos tables de leur pesante argenterie. Vous dites: 'Mon père est mort dans cette maison, il faut que je la vende !' Anathème sur ce sophisme de l'insensibilité ! dites au contraire : 'Il y est mort, je ne puis plus la vendre'.

In all the acts of the French Revolution, one can hear the voice of divinity saying, 'I want to show you what you can do without me.

It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour ; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.

Divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.

il partageait avec un autre héros de la révolution le pouvoir d'agiter la multitude, sans avoir celui de la dominer, ce qui forme le véritable cachet de la médiocrité dans les troubles politiques.

However, Christianity has come to present us a new idea, all the more powerful in that it rests on a universal idea as old as the world, and that we needed to be rectified and sanctioned by revelation. So when the guilty ask us it is why the innocent suffer in his world, we are not lacking in responses, as you have seen, but we can choose one that is more direct and perhaps more convincing than all the others. We can reply: Innocence suffers for you, if you wish it.

Je meurs avec l'Europe, je suis en bonne compagnie.

Refuse to honour the genius who has abused his gifts.

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

The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.

Qu'on rie des idées religieuses, ou qu'on les vénère, n'importe : elles ne forment pas moins, vraies ou fausses, la base unique de toutes les institutions durables.

The people count for nothing in revolutions, or at most count only as a passive instrument.

J'ai lu des millions de plaisanteries sur l'ignorance des anciens qui voyaient des esprits partout : il me semble que nous sommes beaucoup plus sots, nous qui n'en voyons nulle part.

The savage cuts down the tree to gather its fruit, he unharnesses the ox that missionaries have just given him, and cooks it with the wood of the plough. He has known us for three centuries without having wanted anything from us, except gunpowder to kill his fellows and brandy to kill himself.

There is a sure rule for judging books just as there is for judging men: it is enough to know by whom they are loved, and by whom they are hated.

The philosophy of Plato, which is the human preface of the Gospel [. . .]

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

Genius is a grace. The true man of genius acts by movement or by impulsion.

Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests. To submit it to the individual discussion is to destroy it; it is given life only through the national mind, that is to say, by political faith, which is a creed.

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

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.