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Antoine de Rivarol Quotes

1753–1801 France

Antoine de Rivarol (26 June 1753 – 11 April 1801) was a Royalist French writer and translator who lived during the Revolutionary era.

France
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Poets
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Random Antoine de Rivarol quote

36 quotes

The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or a Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marcus Aurelius.

God is the highest measure of our incapacity; the universe, space itself, are not so inaccessible.

Of Man, His Intellectual Faculties, and His Main Ideas (1797)

The being that only feels does not yet think, and the being that thinks feels always.

Of Man, His Intellectual Faculties, and His Main Ideas (1797)

The man who speaks is the man who thinks out loud.

De l'universalité de la langue française (1784)

It is prose which gives sway to a language, because it is quite usual; poetry is only a luxury object.

De l'universalité de la langue française (1784)

Certainty and mystery are for feeling; clarity and uncertainty for reasoning.

Of Man, His Intellectual Faculties, and His Main Ideas (1797)

Politics is like the sphinx of the fable; it devours all those who do not decipher its enigmas.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

All the world needs France, while England needs all the world.

De l'universalité de la langue française (1784)

Reason is a historian, but the passions are actors.

A cat doesn't caress us, it caresses itself on us.

Religion unites men in the same dogmas, politics unites them in the same principles, and philosophy sends them back into the woods; it is the dissolver of society.

Language is the painting of our ideas.

De l'universalité de la langue française (1784)

Imagination is a friend of the future.

Of Man, His Intellectual Faculties, and His Main Ideas (1797)

What is not clear is not French.

De l'universalité de la langue française (1784)

Unbelief is a terrible luxury.

Of Man, His Intellectual Faculties, and His Main Ideas (1797)

It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, complaining of the present, and trembling for the future.

Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)

It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers, but to act with wisdom, there is the rub!

Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Antoine de Rivarol (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.