19 Quotes by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives.

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

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

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

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

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease.

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.

If I had a device, it would be the true, the true only, leaving the beautiful and the good to settle matters afterwards as best they could.