All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.
Joseph De Maistre

Every country has the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
Joseph de Maistre

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.
Joseph de Maistre

We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.
Joseph de Maistre

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.
Joseph de Maistre

Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.
Joseph de Maistre

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.
Joseph De Maistre