Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
What signifies the ladder, provided one rise and attain the end? — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
“Nothing is more painful to me than the disdain with which people treat second-rate authors, as if there were room only for the first-raters.” — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
One is always of his age and especially he who least appears so. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
“Tell me who loves, who admires you, and I will tell you who you are.” — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
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. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share
Since it is necessary to have enemies, let us endeavour to have those who do us honour. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
If I had a device, it would be the true, the true only, leaving the beautiful and the good to settle matters afterwards as… — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Copy Share Image
