An empty man is full of himself.

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Of all bores, the worst is the sparkling bore.

Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.

The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.