Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.