Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders.

I resemble the poplar,--that tree which, even when old, still looks young.

What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

Speech is but the incorporation of thought.

National literature begins with fables and ends with novels.