What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Language is the archives of history.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.