All Quotes

"Those who have most deeply studied Jonson and most truly felt his power, will hesitate the longest before pronouncing a decisive judgment on the place he occupies among the foremost poets of our literature. One thing, however, can be considered as certain in any estimate which we may form. His throne is not with the Olympians but with the Titans; not with those who share the divine gifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct, but with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and giant strength of intellectual muscle. What we most marvel at in his writings, is the prodigious brain-work of the man, the stuff of constant and inexhaustible cerebration they contain. Moreover, we shall not be far wrong in saying that, of all the English poets of the past, he alone, with Milton and Gray, deserves the name of a great and widely learned scholar."

"To make a proper estimation of his merits as a dramatic writer, we are to consider what was the state of the drama and the usual practice of the stage-writers in those early times; and what alterations and improvements it received from the plays of Jonson. Shakespear, and Beaumont and Fletcher, are the only contemporary writers that can be put in competition with him; and as they have excellencies of genius superior to those of Jonson, they have weaknesses and defects which are proportionably greater. If they transcend him in the creative powers, and the astonishing flights of imagination, their judgment is much inferior to his; and if he doth not at any time rise so high, neither perhaps doth he sink so low as they have done."

"In this painting of our life given to us by our memories, everything is moving and depends on our point of view."

"Never the mind without the soul."

"Having found nothing worth more than emptiness, he leaves space vacant."

"When I had the strength, I did not have the patience. I have the patience today and I no longer have the power."

"Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words."

"Let anger pass, make a place for it; do not impede its progress; do not disturb its development, give it the time it needs to die out, open a wide path for it."

"There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape."

"In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy."

"What is clear should not be drawn out too much. These useless explanations, these endless examinations are a kind of long whiteness and lead to boredom. It is the uniformity of a wall, of a long piece of laundry."

"In order to know men, something must be chanced. Who risks himself of nothing knows nothing."

"Logic works, metaphysics contemplates."

"To be pathetic when we cry, we must cry without wanting to and without knowing it."

"Half myself mocks the other half."

"A frightening thing, which is perhaps true: "old men want to survive.""

"You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?"

"Everyone makes and has need of making a world other than the one he sees."

"Nothing is better than a justified enthusiasm."

"Let us look for our light in our feelings. There is a warmth in them that contains many clarities."

"Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing."

"There is nothing perfectly true for man; I mean in human opinions. Just like there is nothing perfectly round."

"Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war."

"Retreat often into your sphere, rest yourself in your center, plunge yourself into your element: good advice, which must be remembered."

"Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself."

"You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth."

"To write his views or his observations, his ideas, but not his judgments. Our judgments limit our views of things. Some enclosures, but no walls. The man who always write his judgments places before his eyes the calpe and abyla. He goes no further and creates a nec plus ultra. Thus, in the study of wisdom, many views and few judgments."

"When we find what we have been looking for, we don't have time to say it. We must die."

"One must die lovable (if one can)."

"Reason does not reason. It goes straight to the fact or the consequence."

"When a truth is better conceived through abstraction, use the abstraction; if not, don't."

"Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision."

"It is not light that burns, that purifies, that consumes, that divides, and that recomposes; it is fire. And this fire we are talking about always follows light."

"Of what must be said and what must not be said. The importance of knowing."

"In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent."

"Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name."

"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."