Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

Love decreases when it ceases to increase.

Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.

Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture.

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.