Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.

One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.

The heart of man does not tolerate an absence of the excellent and supreme.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.