We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

If you possess a library and a garden, you have everything you need. (translation from the French) Si vous possedez une bibliotheque et un jardin, vous avez tout ce qu'il vous faut.

Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.

To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you.

It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse-the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.

Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.