FRANCOIS RENE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

This system demands that the historian shall describe without indignation the most brutal atrocities, speak without love about the highest virtues and with his glacial eye see in social life only the manifestation of irresistible laws due to which every phenomenon occurs exactly as it inevitably had to occur

Every revolution is the consequence of one revolution and the beginning of another.

Make no mistake. Without individual property, none are free.

A degree of silence envelops [George] Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle.

Every institution goes through three stages — utility, privilege, and abuse.

I am Bourbon as a matter of honor, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.

Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory .

The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.

Justice is the bread of the nation; it is always hungry for it.

Let us not disdain glory too much; nothing is finer, except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life.

You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.

There are two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; ... look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it.

Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life.

Music is the child of prayer, the companion of religion.

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature.

I value in the cat the independent and almost ungrateful spirit which prevents her from attaching herself to any one, the indifference with which she passes from the salon to the housetop. When we caress her, she stretches herself and arches her back responsively; but this is because she feels an agreeable sensation, not because she takes a silly satisfaction, like the dog, in faithfully loving a thankless master. The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.

One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture.

There is nothing beautiful or sweet or great in life that is not mysterious.

Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.