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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Discretion is not the better part of biography.