Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

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.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

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

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

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

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.