The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.