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

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

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.

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.

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

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