Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom.

Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life.

...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

...Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.

I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.