Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.
Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
Common sense suits itself to the ways of the world. Wisdom tries to confirm to the ways of heaven.
There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment.
One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.
The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.
Let your cry be for free souls rather than for freedom. Moral liberty is the only important liberty.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
We shall always keep a spare corner in our heads to give passing hospitality to our friends' opinion.
When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.
The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.
Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.
The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.
Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.
We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.
Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench.
Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.
Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.
Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.
Never be sad for what is over, just be glad it was once yours. Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard.
Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.
Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features
Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders.
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
Strength is natural, but grace is the growth of habit. This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting.
If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.
Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.
A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.
There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.
I quit Paris unwillingly, because I must part from my friends; and I quit the country unwillingly, because I must part from myself.
There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.
We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.
You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.
Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms.
He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.
Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that's a good thing born from a bad thing.
Thoughts there are, that need no embodying, no form, no expression. It is enough to hint at them vaguely; a word, and they are heard and seen.
The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.