... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.

Where there is no longer love, there is no longer anything.

... what is there over which the incomparable beauty of childhood would not triumph?

Our work can never be better than we are ourselves.

Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying; that is why Providence shields it from too personal or too general passions, and grants it a patient and persevering organization, durable sensibility, and the contemplative sense in which lies invincible faith.

The capacity for passion is both cruel and divine.

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.