Joseph de Maistre

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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