Quotes from Joseph de Maistre

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.

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.

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

A child is an angel dependent on man

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.

Without doubt, God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it.

Man may well have covered over and, so to speak, encrusted the truth with the errors he has loaded onto it, but these errors are local, and universal truth will always show itself.

Man, in spite of his fatal degradation, bears always the evident marks of his divine origin, in that every universal belief is always more or less true.

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.

We recognize in a plant some unknown power, a single, form-giving force, which creates and conserves, which moves unwaveringly toward its end, which appropriates what is useful to it and rejects that which would harm it.

Man in harmony with his Creator is sublime, and his action is creative; equally, once he separates himself from God and acts alone, he does not cease to be powerful, since this is the privilege of his nature, but his acts are negative and lead only to destruction.

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.

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