Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

There are things one does not say for a long time, but, once they are said, one never stops repeating them.

Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)

Nearly always, so as to live at peace with ourselves, we disguise our own impotence and weakness as calculation and policy; it is our way of placating that half of our being which is in a sense a spectator of the other.

There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power... on the contrary, they must be given less power.

No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being.