It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them.

War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.

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.

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.