Aphorists

"He who speaks of his "generation" admits that he's part of a herd."

"Stupid ideas are immortal. Each new generation invents them anew."

"For the myth of a past golden age, present day humanity substitutes the myth of a future plastic age."

"The cultured man has the obligation to be intolerant."

"Every solution seems trivial to the one who does not understand the problem."

"The stupidity of an old man imagines itself to be wisdom; that of an adult, experience; that of a youth, genius."

"To be authentically modern is, in each and every age, a sign of mediocrity."

"Philosophy's aim is not to paint new objects but to give their true color to familiar objects."

"To be civilized is to be able to criticize what we believe without ceasing to believe in it."

"Those who proclaim that the noble is despicable end up by proclaiming that the despicable is noble."

"Egalitarian ideas distort our perception of the present and, in addition, mutilate our vision of the past."

"In the Christian obsessed with "social justice" it isn't easy to discern whether charity is flourishing or faith is expiring."

"The punishment of the idealist consists in the triumph of his cause."

"Poetry is the fingerprint of God in human clay."

"Only the problems of his time seem important to the fool."

"There are not a few French historians who think that the history of the world is an episode in the history of France."

"The Church used to absolve sinners; today it has the gall to absolve sins."

"Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience."

"The Church founders without the ballast of "average Christians.""

"The "ivory tower" has a bad reputation only among the inhabitants of intellectual hovels."

"I distrust every idea that doesn't seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries."

"Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities."

"Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon."

"The writer who loves or hates is less persuasive than the one who loves and hates."

"To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking."

"Philosophy is a literary genre."

"It is unjust to reproach the writers of today with bad taste, when the very notion of taste is dead."

"If we believe in God, we should not say "I believe in God," but "God believes in me.""

"The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence."

"Total freedom of expression does not compensate for lack of talent."

"Every non-hierarchical society is divided in two."

"The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs."

"To be intelligent without ideas is the privilege of the artist."

"There is nothing more common than transforming a duty which inconveniences us into an "ethical problem.""

"Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal."

"Imperatives, ethical or esthetic, should be negative. Positive imperatives increase imposture."

"The liturgy can only be spoken definitively in Latin. In a vulgar tongue it is vulgar."

"The modern soul is a lunar landscape."

"Imitation, in the arts, is less harmful than rules."

"Truth is so subtle that it never inspires as much confidence as an erroneous thesis."

"Adaptation to to the modern world requires sclerosis of sensibility and degradation of character."

"Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion."

"Intellectual vulgarity attracts voters like flies."

"No public cause deserves the unlimited allegiance of an intelligent man."

"There is an illiteracy of the soul that no diploma cures."

"God prefers an uncircumcised heart to a castrated mind."

""Taste is relative" is the excuse adopted by those eras that have bad taste."

"The modernist object does not possess inner life; only internal conflicts."

"The criterion of "progress" between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill."

"The modern tragedy is not the tragedy of reason defeated but of reason triumphant."