Essayists From France

"It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost."

"You want to talk to someone: first open your ears."

"Madness is an illness of the brain, not of the mind."

"Luminous words, like those drops of light we see in fireworks."

"And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure."

"I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted."

"When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it."

"You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you."

"A reason is often good, not because it is conclusive, but because it is dramatic,—because it has the stamp of him who urges it, and is drawn from his own resources. For there are arguments ex homine as well as ad hominem."

"Chance generally favors the prudent."

"Chastity enables the soul to breathe a pure air in the foulest places; continence makes her strong, no matter in what condition the body may be; her sway over the senses makes her queenly; her light and peace render her beautiful."

"Children have more need of models than of critics."

"When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect."

"Certain critics resemble closely those people who when they would laugh show ugly teeth."

"We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live."

"Gravity is but the rind of wisdom; but it is a preservative rind."

"History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable."

"We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking."

"Ignorance, which in behavior mitigates a fault, is, in literature, a capital offense."

"He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet."

"Justice is truth in action."

"Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them."

"One can, with dignity, be wife and widow but once."

"Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people."

"The mind is the atmosphere of the soul."

"Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy."

"Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth."

"All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger."

"Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot."

"Piety is a kind of modesty. It makes us turn aside our thoughts, as modesty makes us cast down our eyes in the presence of whatever is forbidden."

"Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument."

"Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence."

"Politeness smooths wrinkles."

"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."

"Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better."

"In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition."

"In the present day our literary masonry is well done, but our architecture is poor."

"A temperate style is alone classical."

"The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections."

"Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable."

"Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it."

"To see the world is to judge the judges."

"Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures."

"Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue."

"How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens?"

"Words, like glass, darken whatever they do not help us to see."

"Joubert had this gift. He never wrote a book. He only prepared to write one, resolutely seeking the exact conditions that would allow him to write it. Then he forgot even his plan."

"In selecting from the “Thoughts” I have sought those that are the largest and deepest, that are the least one-sided or partial, those that combine originality with beauty, brevity with weight, freshness with truth ; and thence I have passed over most of those that were written under dogmatic influences, and which, therefore, seem to me partial or one-sided. At the same time, to any who shall find themselves profited by what is here given them in English, may be cordially recommended the original volume, of which scarcely the half is here translated."

"L'on voit bien que l'Opéra est l'ébauche d'un grand spectacle; il en donne l'idée."

"Amas d'épithètes, mauvaises louanges: ce sont les faits qui louent, et la manière de les raconter."