Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

There is something dark and wintry about the atmosphere of the later Middle Ages.

Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work.

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged, almost equally, to the future and to the past.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile