Skip to content

Quotes from St. Petersburg Dialogues — Joseph de Maistre

1753–1821 Italy

← All quotes by Joseph de Maistre

8 quotes

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

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

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

The first among the sciences is that of statesmanship. That cannot be learnt in academies.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

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.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

It is imagination that loses battles.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

Genius does not seem to derive any great support from syllogisms. Its carriage is free; its manner has a touch of inspiration. We see it come, but we never see it walk.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

Reason can make little headway on its own and struggles to be heard; often it has to be – so to speak – armed by the fearsome epigram. French wit pricks like a needle, so that the thread goes through the hole.

St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

Attribution

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