Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.