Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

Experience is only half of experience.

Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think.