Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.

Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.

Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.

Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.

There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.

It is easier to be mistaken about the true than the beautiful.

There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard.