Discretion is not the better part of biography.

If this is dying, I don't think much of it.

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

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

In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

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

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.