Conservatives

"Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle."

"The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it."

"An individual declares himself a member of some group or other with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name."

"Politics is the pastime of empty souls."

"To have a dialog with those who do not share our basic premises is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time."

"Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it."

"Poetry has died, asphyxiated by metaphors."

"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.""

"It is easier to forgive certain dislikes than to share certain enthusiasms."

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

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

"A cultivated soul is one where the din of the living does not drown out the music of the dead."

""To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute."

"Whoever betrays us never forgives us for his act of betrayal."

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

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

"Progress is hubris and nemesis fused together."

"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.""

"The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality."

"The racist is annoyed because he secretly suspects that the races are equal. The anti-racist is annoyed because he secretly suspects that they are not."

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

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

"The itch to be original is an affectation caused by a lack of talent."

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

"The modern soul is a lunar landscape."

"In the idiom of modern architecture nothing complicated can be said."

"The wealthy man's sin isn't his wealth but the importance he attaches to it."

"The number of votes which elect a ruler is not a measure of his legitimacy but of his mediocrity."

"Ideas of the left give birth to revolutions. Revolutions give birth to ideas of the right."

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

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

"Agricultural prosperity ennobles; industrial prosperity vulgarizes."

"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."

"Excess of politeness paralyzes; the lack of it brutalizes."

"To be unaware of the putrefaction of the modern world is a symptom of contagion by it."

"Intellectual vulgarity attracts voters like flies."

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

"History is a series of nights and days. Short days and protracted nights."

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

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

"The genuine reader is the one who reads for pleasure the books that others only study."

"The function of revolutions is to destroy the illusions that created them."

"Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies."

""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."

"Whoever says that he "belongs to his time" is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment."

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