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

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

In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.

A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile

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

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

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