"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it."

" "- Last night after dinner, when we were in the garden, I said,"I want to be alone for a whole summer, and get to the very dregs of life."

"One’s education must first of all be directed to a thorough knowledge of the classics and an understanding of the teachings of the sages."

"Liberal education is literate education of a certain kind: some sort of education in letters or through letters."

"Balzac realised even from the early volumes the particular quality of Stendhal’s intelligence and his mastery of psychology."

"For the king and lord Osiris, they represent by an eye and a sceptre, and some even interpret the name as "Many-eyed"."

"Mankind is divided into three classes: Lovers of wealth; lovers of honour, and lovers of wisdom ; this last, being highest."

"What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days."

"The syllables Ella occurring in Cinderella, are the Greek Ele, which means shiner or giver of light."

"Her supernatural and mystical dresses seem to symbolise the awakening, growth, and final apotheosis of Wisdom within the mind."

"The inaccessibility of the ends of the rainbow has encouraged the growth of countless legends."

"What Epicurus, who never travelled except when he was banished, sought in his own garden, our tourists seek abroad."

"My own sensibility reacts but little externally. It is occupied either by confused inward impressions, or by the ideas which strike me."

"Nothing could be more chimerical than the notion that Man is the same thing as the Economic Man."

"Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted. It is not difficult to perceive why."

"For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment."

"Nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to the authentic man."

"Initiatory death signifies the end at once of childhood, of ignorance, and of the profane condition."

"Wealth and rapidity are what the world admires, and what everyone strives to attain."

" By exhibiting common things in an uncommon light, its flame makes manifest the living mystery and inexplicable marvel of mere existence."

"This used to be my wish: a bit of land, A house and garden with a spring at hand, And just a little wood."

"The archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering which religious experience demands."

"For what did Don Quixote fight ? For Dulcinea, for glory, for life, for survival. "