Every tradition grows continually more venerable, and the more remote its origins, the more this is lost sight of. The veneration paid the tradition accumulates from generation to generation, until it at last becomes holy and excites awe.

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.

Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?

Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre.

One must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it.