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

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

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

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

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.

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.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.