Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.

The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question of quantities; they must be treated with precision. I have never had more satisfaction than in proving this in the realms of art, politics and history.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.