In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

Literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic.

A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age.