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By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

Emile Durkheim

Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Abyss Capacity Force Regular
There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Collection Compatible Humor People Psychology Sadness Science Society
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Cry Miniature Pain Science Social Sociology
I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Economics Freedom Liberty Myself Profit
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Belief Collection Creative Emotion Sentiment System
Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Action Belief Determination Opinion Phenomenon Religious State
By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Break Character Continue Fear Separate
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Disappear Live Man Moral Philosophy Society
Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Comparison Man Obligation Religion
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Logic Relation Religion
Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character Live Man Melancholy Sadness Sorrow
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Finding Lose Moral People
Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Division Labour Life Social Source
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Beginning Discover Lose Man Mindset Mirror
The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Achievement Difficult Enjoyment Known Man Wisdom
Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Cloth Creation Ourselves Reach Sadness World
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Abandonment Comparison Imagination Reality Value
It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Assign Capacity Feeling Human Nature Ourselves Variable
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Environment Mindset Ourselves Social
The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result
EMILE DURKHEIM

Death Known Negative Positive Production Result Suicide Victim
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character History Name Sociology Worth
Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Enough Establishment Experiment Law Observation Willing
A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Absurd Drink Health Himself Language Perfection Person Sick Thinking Time
Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Attract Connection Depression Melancholy Patience Pleasure Realize Suicide
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Act Change Define Different End Identity Nature Similar System
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Force Law Necessary
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Complex Difficult Man Religion Science Teaching Understand

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

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By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

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