If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.

Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.

I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.

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.

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.