Marquis De Custine Quotes
Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.
Marquis De Custine
Quotes to Explore
-
In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those employed believe they can never do enough to show their zeal. The result is...that having passed through one formality does not secure the stranger from another.
Marquis De Custine
-
Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie.
Marquis De Custine
-
The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.
Marquis De Custine
-
What annoyances are more painful than those of which we cannot complain?
Marquis De Custine
-
I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.
Marquis De Custine
-
Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man -- weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded!
Marquis De Custine
