SOCIETY, what people call the world, is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later--this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity! * * * * * WHAT makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and those of the public. * * * * * THE majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before. * * * * * THERE are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools. * * * * * IT is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile. * * * * * THE tragic drama has the great moral drawback of attaching too high an importance to life and death. * * * * * SPERON-SPERONI admirably explains how it is that an author who, in his own opinion, delivers himself clearly, is sometimes obscure to his reader. “It is because,” he says, “the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, the reader from the expression to the thought.” * * * * * A MAN is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers. * * * * * A POETASTER asked Chamfort’s opinion on a couplet. “Excellent,” he said, “were it not for its length.” * * * * * SOME one has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners. * * * * * AN interesting work might be compiled which would point out all the noxious ideas concerning the human spirit, society and morality, to be found argued or implicit in the most celebrated writings and the most highly revered authors; ideas which propagate religious superstition, evil political principles, despotism, class pride and popular prejudices of every kind. Such a work would demonstrate that nearly all books corrupt, and that the best do almost as much harm as good. * * * * *