The greatest of all French critics, and possibly the greatest European critic since Aristotle .

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived - not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve.

What signifies the ladder, provided one rise and attain the end?

There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives.

With everyone born human, a poet - an artist - is born, who dies young and who is survived by an adult.

If I had a device, it would be the true, the true only, leaving the beautiful and the good to settle matters afterwards as best they could.

In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.

Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought Christianity wants the opposite.

I have always thought that if we began for one moment to say what we thought, society would collapse.