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

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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

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

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French.

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Since it is necessary to have enemies, let us endeavour to have those who do us honour.

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve