François Guizot

“ We have no right to complain, for it is we ourselves who incessantly add fuel to the fire—and this is the most deep-seated of our maladies. It is we who give to the Social Republic its chief strength. It is the chaos of our political ideas and our political morality—that chaos disguised sometimes under the word democracy, sometimes under that of equality, sometimes under that of people—which opens all the gates, and throws down all the ramparts of society before it. We say that Democracy is everything. The men of the Social Republic reply, “Democracy is ourselves.” ”

“ On the very eve of the day on which King Ferdinand II. was thus seeking his last refuge in the island of Ischia, Charles VIII. was entering Naples in triumph at the head of his troops, on horseback, beneath a pall of cloth of gold borne by four great Neapolitan lords, and “received,” says Guicciardini, “with cheers and a joy of which it would be vain to attempt a description; the incredible exultation of a crowd of both sexes, of every age, of every condition, of every quality, of every party, as if he had been the father and first founder of the city.” ”

“ I have invoked my own gods, and they have withdrawn from me; I believe that they have no power, since they aid not those who call upon them. Thee, very God and Lord, I invoke; if Thou give me victory over these foes, if I find in Thee the power that the people proclaim of Thee, I will believe on Thee, and will be baptized in Thy name.” The tide of battle turned: the Franks recovered confidence and courage; and the Allemannians, beaten and seeing their king slain, surrendered themselves to Clovis, saying, “Cease, of thy grace, to cause any more of our people to perish; for we are thine.” ”

“ France has shone in war and in peace, through the sword and through the intellect: she has by turns conquered and beguiled, enlightened and troubled Europe; she has always offered to the foreigner a spectacle or an abode full of the curious and the attractive, of noble pleasures and of mundane amusements. And still, after so many centuries of such a grand and brilliant career, France has not yet attained the end to which she ever aspired, to which all civilized communities aspire, and that is, order in the midst of movement, security and liberty united and lasting. ”

“ What connection and harmony between the purest, the most generous, instincts of the human soul, and the dogma of God's Redemption? I touch upon none of the questions, I enter into none of the controversies which have sprung up with respect to this dogma of Redemption; I do not weigh with a view to compare faith and works, nor do I essay to assign the part due to divine grace or to human virtue; I do not define or seek to number the elect, but I pause upon the fact itself of the Redemption by Jesus Christ, the fact upon which the dogma itself reposes. ”

“ A wonderful genius, discovering by flashes, and as if by instinct, the most profound truths of human nature, and giving them expression in an incomparable style, forcing, straining the language to make it render his idea, darting at one bound to the sublimest height by use of the simplest terms, which he, so to speak, bore away with him, wresting them from their natural and proper signification. “There, in spite of that great heart of hers, is that princess so admired and so beloved; there, such as Death has made her for us!” Bossuet alone could speak like that. ”

“ Both court and nation hurled the same reproach at Cardinal Fleury; he alone prevented the king from governing, and turned his attention from affairs, partly from jealousy, and partly from the old habit acquired as a preceptor, who can never see a man in one who has been his pupil. When the old man died at last, as M. d’Argenson cruelly puts it, France turned her eyes towards Louis XV. “The cardinal is dead: hurrah! for the king!” was the cry amongst the people. The monarch himself felt as if he were emancipated. “Gentlemen, here am I—premier minister!” said he to his most intimate courtiers. ”

“ In the formidable crisis of 1814, the restoration of the House of Bourbon was the only natural and solid solution that presented itself; the only measure that could be reconciled to principles not dependent on the influence of force and the caprices of human will. Some alarm might thence be excited for the new interests of French society; but with the aid of institutions mutually accepted, the two benefits of which France stood most in need, and of which for twenty-five years she had been utterly deprived, peace and liberty, might also be confidently looked for. ”

“ But if you cannot prevail with them, then, in the name of truth and of the most sacred interests of the glory of truth, remember that there are still two things even in the most bitter enemy—a free conscience which ought to be respected, an erring brother who may be loved. These two things Calvin did not recognise; in his blind zeal he wished the conscience either to acquiesce or to abdicate its function. It is impossible to assert too strongly that every outrage upon the liberty of conscience of the individual, is a blow that truth receives upon the face, which dishonours her. ”

“ Why is it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it has had to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has been made to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitely better the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings of humanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors which vitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed in review? because it fills up the void that those systems either create or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conducts man higher to the fountain of light? ”

“ Our entry into this great city was a triumph, and the feelings that the Poles of all classes display since our arrival cannot be expressed. The love of country and the national sentiment is not only preserved in its entirety in the hearts of the people, but it has even gained new vigor from misfortune. Their first passion, their chief desire, is to become once more a nation. The richest leave their castles in order to come and demand, with loud cries, the re-establishment of the nation, and to offer their children, their fortunes, their influence. ”

“ In the course of its long career the French magistracy has committed many faults; it has more than once either aspired to overstep its proper limits or failed to fulfil all its duties; but history would be ungrateful and untruthful not to bring into the light the virtues this body has displayed from its humble cradle, and the services it has rendered to France, to her security at home, to her moral dignity, to her intellectual glory, and to the progress of her civilization with all its brilliancy and productiveness, though it is still so imperfect and so thwarted. ”

“ Whatever might be the power of a dramatic representation, it could not, from the outset, obtain a sufficient hold upon us to deliver us over in a defenseless state to all the feelings which will take possession of us in proportion as we advance in the position in which it has placed us. The imagination must lend itself gradually to this new position, and the soul must accustom itself to it, and accept the sway of the impressions which must arise from it, just as, when we experience an unexpected piece of good or bad fortune, we require some time to bring our feelings to a level with our fate. ”

“ Society, whether in the family or out of the family, is only complete when all its members, those who command as well as those who obey, recognize, more or less vaguely, a certain superior rule, which is neither the arbitrary caprice of will, nor the effect of force alone. The idea of society, therefore, implies necessarily another idea, that of government; and the idea of government contains in it two others, the idea of a collection of individuals, and that of a rule which is applicable to them,—a rule which constitutes the right of the government itself ”

“ Have we not the same stature, the same limbs, the same strength—for suffering? All we need is courage. Let us, then, bind ourselves together by an oath: let us swear to support one another; and if they will make war on us, have we not, for one knight, thirty or forty young peasants, nimble and ready to fight with club, with boar-spear, with arrow, with axe, and even with stones if they have not weapons? Let us learn to resist the knights, and we shall be free to cut down trees, to hunt and fish after our fashion, and we shall work our will in flood and field and wood. ”

“ Labour is the law which God has enjoined on man. It is by labour that he developes and improves everything around him—by labour that he developes and improves his own nature. Labour is become the surest pledge of peace between nations. The respect and the liberty enjoyed by labour tend more than anything to calm the anxieties which we might otherwise too justly feel, and to raise our hopes for the prospects of the human race. By what fatality then has it happened that the word labour, so honourable to modern civilization, is become a war-cry and a source of disasters in France? ”

“ I know no more striking spectacle than that of the unshakeable faith and inexhaustible energy of Moses in the pursuit of a work not his own, in which he executes what he has not conceived, in which he obeys rather than commands. Obstacles and disappointments meet him at each turn; he has to struggle with weaknesses, infidelity, caprices, jealousies, and seditions, and these not merely in his own nation, but in his own family. He has himself his moments of sadness, of disquietude: "And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? ”

“ Should it cost me my life, it is impossible for me not to regret, not to deplore, having been, so to speak, the pretext for the destruction of my country. I cannot look on in cold blood and see the ruin at a single blow, in poor Manheim, of all that cost so much pains and trouble to the late prince-elector, my father. When I think of all the explosions that have taken place, I am so full of horror that every night, the moment I begin to go to sleep, I fancy myself at Heidelberg or Manheim, and an eye-witness of the ravages committed. ”