We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best.

The future is a convenient place for dreams.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

Suffering... We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.