Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.
What can you possibly add to a mind that’s full, especially one that’s full of itself.
A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.
The soul paints itself in our machines.
Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.
Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth, – that is the secret of the fine arts.
When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.
Think of the ills from which you are exempt.
Think that day lost whose descending sun, views from thy hand no noble action done.
Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent.
I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred, that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering, that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.
When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect.
Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that, it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.
The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.
In bringing up a child, think of its old age.
Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute.
Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.
The supreme sway of chastity over the senses makes her queenly.
The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.