Patriotism is idolatry of the self.

In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.

The apprehension of necessity is an imitation of creation.

It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.