Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.
A war between Europeans is a civil war.
I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.
It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.
It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.
Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
Taste is the common sense of genius.
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.
The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.
