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

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.

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

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.

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

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.

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