Benjamin Constant Quotes

#1. Woe to the man who in the first moments of a love-affair does not believe that it will last forever! Woe to him who even in the arms of some mistress who has just yielded to him maintains an awareness of trouble to come and foresees that he may later tear himself away!

Benjamin Constant

#2. If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.

Benjamin Constant

#3. Nearly always, so as to live at peace with ourselves, we disguise our own impotence and weakness as calculation and policy; it is our way of placating that half of our being which is in a sense a spectator of the other.

Benjamin Constant

#4. Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

Benjamin Constant

#5. Political liberty involves every citizen without exception in the examination and study of his most sacred interest. It aggrandizes the spirit, ennobles the mind, and establishes among all of them a sort of intellectual quality which makes for a people who are both glorious and powerful.

Benjamin Constant

#6. The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.

Benjamin Constant

#7. No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being ...

Benjamin Constant

#8. We are such volatile creatures, we finally feel sentiments we feign

Benjamin Constant

#9. Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)

Benjamin Constant

#10. There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power ... on the contrary, they must be given less power.

Benjamin Constant

#11. It is true that love is a feeling one places, whenever one feels the need of placing it, on the first object that happens along

Benjamin Constant

#12. There are things one does not say for a long time, but, once they are said, one never stops repeating them.

Benjamin Constant