Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.

Books are a languid pleasure.