It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

There is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous... Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.

Truth must be repeated again and again, because error is constantly being preached round about.

One glance, one word from you gives more pleasure than all the wisdom of this world.

It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.