In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence. A kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable. . has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death. Joseph De Maistre
About This Quote

The quote above is from "The Last Temptation of Christ" by the French author and Nobel laureate, Jean-Paul Sartre. It's an excellent commentary on the human condition. We are so prone to selfishness that we often forget that we are all connected. The quote above is very true in its indication of the violence with which we treat one another, especially with regards to war.

But I would like to point out something else about this quote that's not as obvious. The whole world is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death itself.

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More Quotes By Joseph De Maistre
  1. A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
  2. Every country has the government it deserves.
  3. Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
  4. I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.
  5. War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no...
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