Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.

One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.

Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

Enjoy what thou has inherited from thy sires if thou wouldn't really possess it. What we employ and use is never an oppressive burden; what the moment brings forth, that only can it profit by.

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Every individual who is not creative has a negative, narrow, exclusive taste and succeeds in depriving creative being of its energy and life.