It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion.

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.