How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

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

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

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

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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.

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