Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.

Word which the finger of God has written on the brow of every man — hope!

Never laugh at those who suffer; suffer sometimes those who laugh.

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.

Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.