There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.
Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.
Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives a flavor to the smallest leaves of life.
Antiquity! I like its ruins better than its reconstructions.
Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.
The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.
A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.
Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.
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.