Discretion is not the better part of biography.
It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.
With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.
The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.
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.
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.