A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

Doubt, or the absence of faith and naivete, is a vice peculiar to this age, for no one is obedient nowadays; and naivete, which means the dominance of temperament in the manner, is a gift from God, possessed by very few.

The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.

The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.

Wine transforms moles into eagles.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.