If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.

A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.