Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.

But oh! the Latin!-Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. Lucky dogs! they already knew in their cradles the nouns ending in im. I on the contrary had to learn it by heart, in the sweat of my brow.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.

I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.