Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.
Joseph de Maistre
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. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable... Has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others... And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man... The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.
politics death
A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
politics nations philosophy
Every country has the government it deserves.
politics philosophy government
Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
politics philosophy man
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.
politics philosophy inspirational
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.
politics philosophy war
order religion sacrifice divine civilization
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.
crime money people men
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.
man people power
There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.
philosophy art
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.
man
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.
vision results man work
It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.
difficulties man
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 man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.
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