Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been simple.
True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.
Reading is thinking with some one else’s head instead of one’s own.
It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time in which to read them.
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name.