True philosophy invents nothing it merely establishes and describes what is.

Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.

All truly historical peoples have an idea they must realize, and when they have sufficiently exploited it at home, they export it, in a certain way, by war they make it tour the world.

Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage.

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.

The universal and absolute law is that natural justice which cannot be written down, but which appeals to the hearts of all.

What is philosophy? It is something that lightens up, that makes bright.

The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy it leads only to itself.

We need religion for religions's sake, morality for morality's sake and art for art's sake.

Art neither belongs to religion, nor to ethics but, like these, it brings us nearer to the Infinite, one of the forms of which it manifests to us. God is the source of all beauty, as of all truth, of all religion, of all morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of the Infinite.

Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.

You can only govern men by serving them.