Count Joseph Louis De Lagrange Quotes

Lagrange, in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had overcome the difficulty (of the parallel axiom). He went so far as to write a paper, which he took with him to the Institute, and began to read it. But in the first paragraph something struck him that he had not observed: he muttered: 'Il faut que j'y songe encore', and put the paper in his pocket.' [I must think about it again]. ~ Augustus De Morgan

It is a matter for considerable regret that Fermat, who cultivated the theory of numbers with so much success, did not leave us with the proofs of the theorems he discovered. In truth, Messrs Euler and Lagrange, who have not disdained this kind of research, have proved most of these theorems, and have even substituted extensive theories for the isolated propositions of Fermat. But there are several proofs which have resisted their efforts. ~ Adrien-Marie Legendre

A religion that executes its obsolete sovereign must now establish the power of its new sovereign; it
closes the churches, and this leads to an endeavor to build a temple. The blood of the gods, which for a
second bespatters the confessor of Louis XVI, announces a new baptism. Joseph de Maistre qualified the
Revolution as satanic. We can see why and in what sense. Michelet, however, was closer to the truth
when he called it a purgatory. An era blindly embarks down this tunnel on an attempt to discover a new
illumination, a new happiness, and the face of the real God. But what will this new god be? ~ Albert Camus

We all teach ... the chemistry of Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac. ~ Marcellin Berthelot

By the light which the Holy Ghost will give you by His dear Spouse, Mary, you will understand your own evil, your corruption, and your incapacity for anything good, which is not God's free gift to us, either as Author of nature or of grace. In consequence of this knowledge, you will despise yourself. You will only think of yourself with horror. You will regard yourself as a snail, that spoils everything with its slime; or a toad, that poisons everything with its venom; or as a spiteful serpent, only seeking to deceive. In other words, the humble Mary will communicate to you a portion of her profound humility, which will make you despise yourself, despise nobody else, but love to be despised yourself. ~ Louis De Montfort

One does not make revolutions by halves. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

The spirits of the brain are directly connected to the testicles. This is why men who weary their imagination in books are less suitable for procreative functions ... ~ Louis De La Forge

If you say the Rosary faithfully unto death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins, 'you will receive a never-fading crown of glory' ~ Louis De Montfort

It would be leaving very little to leave a life in which one must
be either the accomplice or the silent witness of evil. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered yellow hair ~ Anne Rice

The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself ... The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

From that point on, the extraordinary system of spies and informers which has played an important part in the political work of the French state into our own time took shape. (Sartine, who became lieutenant general de police in 1759, is supposed to have said to Louis XV, "Sire, when three people are chatting in the street one of them is surely my man.") Eighteenth-century police manuals like those of Colquhoun in England or Lemaire in France are no less than general treatises on the government's full repertoire of domestic regulation, coercion, and surveillance. ~ Charles Tilly

In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

I've been in love often enough to be completely exhausted by it, and not to know what it means any more. When you look back afterwards, you can always find another way of putting it. You say, "I was obsessed, it was really lust, I was fooling myself," because after you've recovered from being in love, you always decide that that wasn't what it was. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Mustafa Kemal drily reminds his co-conspirators that the object is not to die for the revolution, but to live for it. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Luisa pointed up at the crucifix on the wall and asked, 'Do you believe in all that?' 'I would like to,' he replied, 'but it is too difficult.' She nodded in agreement and said, 'If the person hanging on it were a woman, then I would believe it. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Christmas is such a trial,' said Mrs McCosh. 'I do most sincerely wish the Lord had been born at some other time. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Let not that man presumes to look for mercy from God who offends His Holy Mother! ~ Louis De Montfort

All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Now I have discovered where it is that she goes. It's the guillotine that draws her, across the river in the Place Louis Quinze- Place de la Revolution now-where daily crowds gather, the vendors selling lemonade, the children playing prisoner's base, the old ladies gossiping as the heads fall. ~ Sandra Gulland

We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son. ~ Louis De Montfort

Pelagia put her hands on her hips, taking advantage of the superiority implicit in the fact that she was standing and he lying down. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Gregor flushed as he went on: "The entire content of the Confesions could be put into one single sentence in the book: when Augustine addresses God, saying: 'Thou hast made us for Thyself and our heart is unquiet until it rests in Thee.' This sentence, my lords and friends, is immortal. It contains the very heart of religion. ~ Louis De Wohl

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Let them eat cake. On being told that her people had no bread. Attributed to Marie-Antoinette, but remark is much older. Rousseau refers in his Confessions, 1740, to a similar remark, as a well-known saying. Others attribute the remark to the wife of Louis XIV. ~ Marie Antoinette

Fame is an empty noise. Let us put our ears to the centuries that have gone: we no longer hear anything; those who, at another time, shall walk among our urns, shall hear no more. The good - that is what we must pursue, whatever the price, preferring the title of a dead hero to that of a living coward. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

Thus, from the first divine contract, and the pure region where truth abides, a continuous chain of mercies and light extends to humanity, through every epoch, and will be prolonged to the end of time, until it returns to the abode from which it descends, taking with it all the peaceful souls it shall have collected in its course; that we may know that it was Love which opened, directed and closed the circle of all things. ~ Louis Claude De Saint-Martin

[...] she understood that nothing is less obvious in a man than that which seems unquestionable. ~ Louis De Bernieres

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world. ~ Joseph Addison

Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. ~ Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

The style is the man himself ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon