The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

Poetry is the disease of the brain.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.