An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct.

Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties.

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs

He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.

Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here.