Only silence is great; all else is weakness.

France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.