Joseph De Maistre Quotes

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the King of Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate , ambassador to Russia and minister of state to the court in Turin .A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment, Maistre regarded monarchy as both a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government. He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and for the ultimate authority of the Pope in temporal matters. Maistre argued that the rationalist rejection of Christianity was directly responsible for the disorder and bloodshed which followed the French Revolution of 1789.



Wikipedia  

✵ 1. April 1753 – 26. February 1821
Joseph De Maistre photo
Joseph De Maistre: 13   quotes 18   likes

Famous Joseph De Maistre Quotes

“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”

The Count, in Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, "Second Dialogue," (1821).

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.”

Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite.
Correspondance diplomatique, tome 2. Paris : Michel Lévy frères libraires éditeurs, 1860, p.196.
Famous Sayings and their Authors, Edward Latham, 1906, Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=xvkNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA181.
Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus, 2003, Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=D8yVAC8CtO4C&printsec=frontcover.
Letter 76, on the topic of Russia's new constitutional laws (27 August 1811); published in Lettres et Opuscules. The English translation has several variations, including "Every country has the government it deserves" and "In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve." The quote is popularly misattributed to better-known commentators such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln.

“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.”

Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d'abord par de grands coupables et dépensée ensuite par d'honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu'ils font.
Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Ch. I

“It is imagination that loses battles.”

Source: St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821), "Seventh Dialogue," p. 221

Joseph De Maistre Quotes

“Never have nations been civilized, except by religion.”

XXXIII, p. 99
Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1809)

“A woman can only be superior as a woman; as soon as she wants to emulate man, she is nothing but an ape.”

Letter to his daughter Constance de Maistre, Lettres, 146
Letters

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

"Fifth Dialogue," p. 149
St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

Similar authors

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori photo
Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori 2
Italian Catholic bishop, spiritual writer, composer, musici…
Baltasar Gracián photo
Baltasar Gracián 31
Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing photo
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 18
writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic
Pierre Beaumarchais photo
Pierre Beaumarchais 11
French playwright diplomat and polymath
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Niccolo Machiavelli 130
Italian politician, Writer and Author
Voltaire photo
Voltaire 167
French writer, historian, and philosopher
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau 91
Genevan philosopher
Jean de La Bruyère photo
Jean de La Bruyère 65
17th-century French writer and philosopher
Maximilien Robespierre photo
Maximilien Robespierre 78
French revolutionary lawyer and politician
Claude Adrien Helvétius photo
Claude Adrien Helvétius 8
French philosopher