Each year, it is necessary to respire, to take breath again, to revive ourselves at the great living sources that forever keep their eternal freshness. Where can we find them if not at the cradle of our race, on the sacred summits from where descend the Indus and the Ganges....?

Every epoch dreams its successor.

Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flush of truth.

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

Woman is the Sunday of man: not his repose only, but his joy; the salt of his life.

Achieving a goal is nothing. The getting there is everything.