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

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

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

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower.

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

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

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.