Victor Cousin Quotes

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

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.

Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.

You can only govern men by serving them.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people.

Art for art's sake.