18 Quotes by Victor Cousin

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

Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.

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.

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.

All men have an equal right to the free development of their faculties; they have an equal right to the impartial protection of the state; but it is not true, it is against all the laws of reason and equity, it is against the eternal nature of things, that the indolent man and the laborious man, the spendthrift and the economist, the imprudent and the wise, should obtain and enjoy an equal amount of goods.

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

You can only govern men by serving them.

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

Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage.