The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion.

Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

There is something dark and wintry about the atmosphere of the later Middle Ages.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

Englishmen have always loved Moliere.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.

Those who have made it to the top have only done so through hard work and time conversion.

Dor woke again as dawn came. The sun had somehow gotten around to the east, where the land was, and dried off so that it could shine again.

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.

Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it.

I definitely have a different perspective on music in general. But once I actually have a guitar in my hands, I think I disappear into the same black hole that I was disappearing into when I was 15.

The disciples of a patient Saviour should be patient themselves.

My definition of happiness is having something to do what you love to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.

People forget that eating represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Through agriculture is how we change the world, more than anything else we do.

There is nothing quite so delightfully mysterious as a secret in your own backyard.

I guess through my learning disability, through dyslexia, I've always been a visual learner - I take in everything through my eyes.