Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great.

You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house.

We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.

When a natural king becomes a titular king, every body is pleased and satisfied.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.